A female lawyer for the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been detained in Libya after she was found to be carrying suspicious letters for Muammar Gaddafi's detained son Saif Al-Islam, a Libyan lawyer said Saturday. The Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, was part of a four-member ICC delegation that had traveled to the western mountain town of Zintan where Saif Al-Islam has been kept since his capture in November.
“During a visit (to Saif Al-Islam), the lawyer tried to deliver documents to him, letters that represent a danger to the security of Libya,” said Ahmad Al-Jehani, the Libyan lawyer in charge of the Saif Al-Islam case and who liaises between the government and The Hague-based ICC.
“She is not in jail. She is being detained in a guesthouse, her colleagues are with her.”
Jehani did not say what the documents were, except that they had been sent by Mohammed Ismail, Saif's former right-hand man, who has been on the run since the revolt.
An ICC spokesman was not immediately reachable for comment. Saif, Gaddafi's one-time heir apparent, has been in custody in Zintan since his arrest on Nov. 19 after an uprising that toppled his father's rule after more than 40 years in power.
The ICC wants both Saif and his late father's spymaster, Abdullah Senussi, for crimes against humanity committed while trying to put down last year's bloody revolt.
Tripoli and the ICC have been at loggerheads since Saif Al-Islam's capture over where he should be tried, with Libya arguing it could put him in the dock before a local court.
