When will the Western media, inclusing I am sorry to say the Guardian, give up on the idea that the country had naything to do with Lockerbie? Reasonable observers have concluded all the evidence presented is either contaminated or rubbish. Then the are the strenuous denials by Libya (OK, not worth much but a denial of a charge is not a proof of guilt). Significantly many members of the old Regime (like Musa Kusa), have come through London, and though interviewed by the Metroplitan or Dumfries and Galloway police, have not been detained but allowed to go about their business.

Do you really think that if Mr MK had any role in Lockerbie he would have been released? No. So we can reasonably conclude that he did not have anything to do with Lockerbie. UTA is a different matter.

Charles Norrie

also beyond the ICC's grasp....apparently, is tony blair

when will the west deal with its double standards

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/bounty-blair-war-criminal-chilcot

I'm staunchly apposed to the death penalty and I was a great supporter of human rights groups such Amnesty International...

However, when I read about them wasting their time fighting to save the life of one of the most evil men of our day - My support for them goes out of the window.

What a waste of bloody time. Why aren't they out there fighting for the lives of people who are facing death sentences incurred in the fight for democracy overseas or young people who have been tricked into smuggling drugs across borders.

Instead they speak up for the Gaddafi's who have been at the core of some of the worst human rights abuses in todays world.

The most surprising for myself was to see a member of Amnesty international calling for an inquiry into the death of Colonel gaddafi.

Absolutely unbelievable. If he hangs then I won't be losing any sleep.

"Saif Gaddafi sets Libya's new rulers a test of commitment to human rights"

good point, this is a test.

according to reports Saif Gaddafi was disco dancing on a yacht with Mandleson and the current British Chancellor in attendence, who knows maybe they were having a dance. What are they doing for Saif's human rights?

Ahh, Gadafi

A bit like marmite apparently. You loved him or hated him.

Silly Guardian. Libya's only "commitment" is to yield its oil to Western multinationals.

He's only been in jail for about a month, does that qualify as "languishing" now?

Saif Gaddafi has entered the club of would-be dictators: Uday Hussein, Nicu Ceausescu, Gamal Mubarak, Ahmed Ali Saleh...

All former playboys or corrupt men who thrived in an environment of nepotism. Formerly with everything at their feet and now wretched, in various stages of poor health (some of them now dead) and of no use to anyone.

Kill him or let him live; most people won't lose much sleep in Libya. Having said that, it might be best to leave him to rot in jail to live out the remainder of his now-meaningless existence. Somewhat bad for business to bump him off.

Not that it stopped a group of NTC forces acting how they did with his father though, so who knows.

Now go after greater criminals such as Bush and Blair. I notice how the latter is now very silent about his former Libyan chums, Gaddafi and Gaddafi junior. So much for a "family friend".

Human rights seem to protect those who do wrong, anyone who commits crimes of humanity has no human rights.

So you are opposed to capital punishment when it suits you - how bizarre! Is that, like being a vegetarian on odd weekdays. And whose version of democracy do you support?
I bet you really enjoyed the assassination of bin Laden.
You apparently do not like the Rule of Law - oh well, so be it.

'The most surprising for myself was to see a member of Amnesty international calling for an inquiry into the death of Colonel gaddafi'.

If you don't believe that even bad guys are entitled to human rights, then you don't really believe in human rights at all.

That might be true in an absolute sense, but in a PRACTICAL sense, launching an "inquiry" into Khadaffi's death will do absolutely nothing useful aside of satisfying some peoples' queer sense of evenhanded justice.

I'm staunchly apposed to the death penalty

Er...it's rather obvious you aren't.

"his father's death" that should be murder, any suggestion human rights will be applied across the region are at best naive.

'launching an "inquiry" into Khadaffi's death will do absolutely nothing useful aside of satisfying some peoples' queer sense of evenhanded justice'.

It would also signal that all the stuff that came from NTC leaders about respecting democracy and human rights wasn't just self-serving war propaganda, and that their commitment to these things is genuine. On the other hand, doing nothing would basically signal that, in the new Libya as in the old, impunity for war crimes and human rights abuses will reign.

His sister, Aisha, who is in exile in Algeria, has engaged Israeli lawyer Nick Kaufman, a war crimes specialist

Yes they're rather good at that in Israel

'Human rights seem to protect those who do wrong, anyone who commits crimes of humanity has no human rights'.

And how would you know if Saif Gadaffi has committed crimes against humanity or not, without giving him a fair trial?

Unlike the Guardian and the massed ranks of the infantile left (Labour government words not mine) Amnesty International retain some element of integrity.

Of course the Libyans could do it the British way and foul up the initial trial and spend the next 18 years hounding Gadaffi finally dreaming up some dodgy new forensic tests to convict him and then consider that some kind of triumph but I suspect the best way is simply to prepare thoroughly, organise some kind of legitimate trial, convict and then throw away the key.

..presuming of course that Gadaffi wasn't a juvenile when the offence took place.

Of course if he had been no doubt Britain would just change the age of culpability for crime (where sentencing concerns)...retrospectively...eventually.

This evil toe rag should be given a quick, speedy trial and hung. Get it all over with and bury him at sea and let Libya get on with reform.

I don't recall Osama Bin Ladin getting the luxury of a trial before he was executed and sent to sleep with the fishes by the US.

It is none of our business how Saif gets his.

gaddafi was probably less of a tyrant than any american president. I'm not saying he wasn't guilty of human rights violations but he was hardly up there with saddam and mugabe. it's just very convenient to cast him as such.

everyone has lept behind the rebels assuming they're a new victory for freedom, of course they would have to be seeing as we supported them in their fight against gaddafi. this has nothing to do with oil and gaddafi's quite succesful attempts to retain more control and profit for libya in regards to it's oil supply.

people would do well to remember the west includes the likes of osama bin laden, idi amin and robert mugabe in it's history of supported rebel movements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Libya

Do we really even need to know anymore than this?

Even though it was a kangaroo court even Saddam the beast of Bagdad was tried.
Whatever Saif Gaddaffi's alleged crimes, if the NTC are presenting themselves as more civilized than " The Tyrant" Gaddaffi senior, ( or are they ?) he needs to have a fair trial. Otherwise it will give "oil" to many skeptics like myself that the overthrow of Gaddafi was just to ensure a more compliant oil producer for the Western Alliance.

Don't kid yourselves. The guy most likely has electrodes attached to his genitals this very moment.

The rule of law applies to everybody, SRRonny, not just the ones you happen to like. A nuisance, but there it is.

I would guess that a fair trial is impossible what with the amount of former regime hierachy still present in the current Libya "government"

If he was handed over to the ICC I would hazard a guess that he wouldn't receive a fair trial there either considering that the original charge sheet contained unverifiable hearsay and at worse falsehoods.

I wonder where that arch hypocrite , Tony Blair confesses to in his newly found faith.
This man is in serious denial. Perhaps its better if he were to get a good therapist. Then again its very difficult to squeeze out the truth from so called powerful people with psychopathic tendencies. They would even make a mule seem less stubborn , with the extra self righteous , and no regrets. He certainly didn't choose the right people to be photographed with very well. Gadaffi and Berlusconi. There is an awesome silence coming from this Middle East Peace Envoy these days. Perhaps the Corporate Media have been told to "butt out" and of course they been very compliant , with no headline exposures.

The Libyans are guilty of torturing and killing both native and immigrant blacks.
It is odd that the first impulse of the rebels was to commit a series of atrocities against black people.
Libya has introduced a system that resembles apartheid, why is Africa and the West so quiet about the genocide that is occurring?

African Union Commission Chairman, Dr. Jean Ping, has disclosed that the Libyan rebels under the so-called Transitional National Council have been engaged in massive killings of black Africans from mainland Africa, as well as Libyans who have darker skins.

Reports say the victims include black Libyans, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, and other citizens of sub-Saharan African, pretending that they are “mercenaries” hired by Gaddafi rather than their innate hatred of black Africans.

my comment is in general, there have been many cases where people who have done wrong have used the human rights as a loop hole to enable a softer sentence or even get away with what they have done.
In the case of saif gadaffi, a strong and loyal supporter of his farther do you really think he was an angel?
Besides its only been about a month he has been locked up, so he hasn't got a tv, internet and so on.
so bloody what, he is getting fed isn't he.
just look at the criminals of britain, they are locked up with computer consoles, cinemas. these are luxuries that no criminal should have.
You seem to be in defence of him, are you a follower, someone who is going to represent him in court or a human right activist nut job?

Why does one person become the test of a whole country's commitment to human rights? This cult of celebrity which accords somebody like Saif Gaddaffi more attention than the many other Libyans who are facing questions over their records under the old regime, and who in many cases are likely to really deserve justice either way. Then there are the people without basic amenities as a result of the civil war, children who may die without better infrastructure. Saif Gaddaffi is an irrelevence.

'You seem to be in defence of him, are you a follower, someone who is going to represent him in court or a human right activist nut job?'.

I'm defending his right to a fair trial, just as I would for anybody else. The right to a fair trial, and the presumption of innocence as it happens, is a cornerstone of any justice system worth the name. If you think that makes me a 'nutjob', then fine, i'm a 'nutjob'.

Yes it's strange that the British Government remain quiet on this issue when in other areas of public life they like to be seen at the forefront in combatting what can only be discribed as a form of racism.

... a human right activist nut job?

Crikey! that's a new one.

If he hangs then I won't be losing any sleep.

Presumably Saif wouldn't either.

Gaddafi may have been a bit of a maniac, but at least he wasn't a xenophobic maniac:

Human rights activists are reporting that black people have been disappearing all over Libya over the past nine months as the rebels started taking out Gaddafi forces. As rebels arrived in towns, they merely sought out blacks and either killed them on the spot or arrested them. Many have died of starvation in those "prisons".

Wherever alleged Gaddafi forces are found to have been executed, most of those murdered have been black. Video footage of ordinary black men who have been working in Libya being executed is available on the internet. Their sin is that some black mercenaries worked for Gaddafi, and their sin now is that they are black.

yep, not to mention a lot of the human rights abuses recieved from the rebels and reported in the media as fact, turned out on investigation by human rights groups to be totally false or based on fabricated evidence.

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Of course this monstrous creep must have a fair trial. And everyone who can speak in his defence must be given full opportunity to state their cases. Step forward for your day(s) in court Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, the heads of the LSE and other members of our "elite"..............

Kill him or let him live; most people won't lose much sleep in Libya. Having said that, it might be best to leave him to rot in jail to live out the remainder of his now-meaningless existence.

His only "crime" is that he happens to be the son of Gaddafi, Muamar Gaddafi that is.

As for the NTC they already have turned out to be worse criminals than Gaddafi, with a non-functioning state,
killings and 7K Libyan citizens in incarceration.

But who cares. The issue here is: OIL, OIL, Oil..............................and more oil.

There has to be humane condition of detention, a fair trial, and no death penalty.

Likewise for all other supporters of the former regime.

Anything else will reflect very badly on the new Libya and raise serious questions over its future. The pressing need for Libya, in the here and now, is to get a grip on the militias and impose a proper rule of law. Otherwise the risk is we will simply move from one unjust tyranny to another - or to chaos.

The governments who backed the intervention need to exert maximum pressure to that end.

Has there been any real change in any of these newly liberated countries?

Albert Camus:

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

the hypocrisy of this is stunning, Bin Laden gets executed without a trial and dumped in the Sea by the US who dont even recognize the ICC, yet Libya has to bow to there authority.

Yes Saif should get a trial, and we should pressure Libya to do that, but how about treating these people with a bit respect instead of treating them as dumb natives, they should trial him in the way that suits them within reason, after all it was Libyans, many thousands of them, who died bringing this awful family to justice.

I can imagine how this conceit is going down with Muslims, especially after Bin Ladens obvious execution (not that i shed much tears for him) but again the hypocracy of it all !

<All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.>

certianly didnt go that way in America did it

Libya - the new champion of human rights ...please - expect anything different. Any country that accepts aid from Sudan's Bashir ...then welcomes him with open arms into the country cannot claim to pay even a passing nod to a commitment to the sanctity of human rights.

Ironically ...Libya calls for international obligations to be respected in relation to the Gaddafi family ...yet fails to hand over Bashir ....meanwhile Not a word from Cameron and Haguey boy .... it makes me want to vomit

What Crimes has he been charged with? What crimes has he committed; actually he's been a staunch advocate of reform and in the beginning sought to negotiate with the rebels ...who refused his overtures

He should be handed over to the Hague ...only there is there a REMOTE possibility of him receiving a fair trial.

@ArapasIt it not just oil. Our world is dependent on oil, how do you think your food is processed and transported to your local supermarket to name one applcation. So oil is important. But not only that Gaddafi, his family and cronies brutalised and exploited a nation for over 40 years; who knows of his initial intentions during the plot ot remove the monarchy were genuine and selfless. He certainly lost the plot by suporting terrorist groups around the world with arms, training and money. His connections with Irish republican movements is well documented. So when the Libyan population rebelled against him and he threatened to crush them wasn't it right for europe and the Americans to offer support. I suspect you are quite young, you need to read a bit of history and stop believing in rhetoric. As for Gaddafi's son let him rot in jail, but a fair trial would be more correct.

Some people on this thread perplex me. I lived in Libya, spent two years in the late Gaddaffi period. I know that many of the faces of the NTC were up to their necks in the old regime, and even more of their relatives were, which is a big deal in Libya.

What I don't know is to what extent Saif had direct responsibility for human rights abuses before and during the war. I don't know whether he ever even gave an order for anybody to be killed.

So how do you all know he's guilty?

If they are allowed to kangaroo court him to the gallows, he will serve as a scapegoat for all the other Libyans who willingly participated in, and to a certain extent instigated, the human rights abuses of the Libyan regime. The new rulers will then blame everything on the nasty Gaddaffies, and everyone can pretend that nobody else was ever involved in anything untowards.

Everything will change so everything can stay the same.

The State is all powerful in America, look at the NDAA - it's just that The State is controlled from Wall Street.

Hm...methinks the 'quite young' man speaks more sense than you. you seem to have swallowed the false information propagated by the US and its' controlled media. eg Gaddafi was wanting to start selling oil in dinars rather than dollars -an idea that would shift the economic balance of the world, which was close to its realisation, and have hurt the American economy. He also wanted to share out Libyan oil wealth more fairly amongst his people...that would not go down well with the multinational corporations.
Gaddafi wanted a more united Africa... an Africa which was independent of Western interference and exploitation. why do you think the billions of dollars in aid never actually help the people of African countries in the long term? Because it’s bad for big business. If you start getting a stronger Africa both economically and politically, then big multinational corporations would literally be close to bankruptcy.

If you want persuading of some of the lies propagated by the US(and UK!) in the last 20-30 years, try watching this.
http://www.corbettreport.com/?s=Faking+It&x=12&y=9

Then come back and truthfully tell us that you believe Libya(and Iraq...and ultimately Iran) are about democracy and Arab springs.
Do you think terrorists would exist if the US hadn't invaded their countries and raped their resources? Do you honestly think these islamic countries have the resources or even will to take on the only super power left in the world? Thinks about it
What we all need is honest, balanced reporting...from which we can determine the truth. I don't think we are getting it .

Saif Gaddafi is innocent.

There is still more evidence that Bin Laden died of renal failure in 2001 than in 2011 by assassination. Can you imagine capturing the most wanted man on the planet and not showing the world his body? Must be some really good reason why not!