THE HAGUE: Judges at the International Criminal Court will decide Monday whether to issue an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for crimes against humanity. A panel of three judges will at 1100 GMT give their response to a request by the court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to have Gaddafi, 69, his 39-year-old son Seif Al-Islam and another close associate arrested. They can grant the request, request more information or simply turn it down. In May, Moreno-Ocampo asked for warrants for the three on counts of murder and persecution committed since mid-February when the bloody uprising started. The third man targeted is Gaddafi's brother-in-law and the head of Libyan intelligence, 62-year-old Abdullah Al-Senussi. Moreno-Ocampo's investigation came after the case was referred to the court by the United Nations Security Council on 26 February. His office launched its investigation five days later. In his submission, Moreno-Ocampo accused Gaddafi of having had a personal hand in planning and implementing “a policy of widespread and systematic attacks against civilians and demonstrators and dissidents in particular”. “Gaddafi's plan expressly included the use of lethal force against demonstrators and dissidents,” it added. Gaddafi had ordered snipers to target civilians leaving mosques after evening prayers and his security forces had rounded up and detained alleged dissidents, it said. “As a result, demonstrators, political activists, journalists and persons who shared information with the media, among others, have been systematically arrested. The whereabouts of many of them are unknown,” it added. Earlier this month, Moreno-Ocampo told the Spanish paper El Mundo he hoped Gaddafi would be detained “by the Libyan people”. Libyan government officials have retorted that Tripoli is “not concerned” by the court's decisions since it is not a party to the Rome Statute that founded the ICC. But Moreno-Ocampo has argued that Libya is legally bound to cooperate with the court under the terms of the UN Security Council resolution. Meanwhile, NATO on Saturday rejected Libyan claims that alliance forces struck a civilian area in Brega, killing 15 people, with a spokesman telling reporters that forces hit “legitimate military targets”. “NATO did target buildings in an abandoned area of Brega. These were legitimate military targets that were hit,” the spokesman for the alliance mission in Libya said. “We took a long time to watch the area and make sure. Meticulous planning went into this.”As far as NATO is concerned, he said, “any people in that area at that time were legitimate military targets.”
