GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Saadi Qadaffi, who fled to Niger, is contesting Interpol’s arrest warrant for him, after earlier dismissing charges of misappropriating funds. His lawyer said Tuesday 2 November that he is challenging the basis of the Interpol warrant, saying it is politically motivated by a new leadership that lacks legitimacy.
The news comes three days after the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, that the presumed heir to the Qddafi regime in Libya, Saif Al-Islam, said it fears Saif Al-Islam, once the presumed heir to the Qaddafi reign, is trying to escape from Libya to Niger with the help of mercenaries, although he is also reported to be asking questions about what will happen to him if he turns himself in. to face prosecutoin by the ICC.
Muammar Qaddafi’s other children have taken refuge in Algeria. They include Hannibal, who provoked a diplomatic row between Libya and Switzerland.
LIBYA – Hannibal Qadaffi’s name is back in the news after western reporters say to have found evidence of “inhumane treatment” of his staff at his compound.
The son of Libya’s leader Muammar Qadaffi, who won his lawsuit for defamation of character brought against the Geneva newspaper La Tribune de Genève and the city of Geneva, and who said would continue to insist “on an international tribunal to clear his name,” could have been hiding a maid that, seemingly, was brutalized by his wife.
In 2008, “Hannibal,” as he is known, was arrested at a luxury hotel in Geneva on charges of abusing two of his domestic staff. The servants later dropped the charges against him.
CNN correspondent Dan Rivers, seems to have found further evidence that abuses against staff at the Hannibal’s household may be widespread. The reporter found a 30-year-old Ethiopian maid, Shweyga Mullah, who says she was brutally tortured by Hannibal’s wife and was later forbidden from receiving medical treatment.
Hannibal Qadaffi and his father are still on the run.
Warning: The CNN report includes graphic content.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee late Tuesday 28 June authorized the use of limited Nato air strikes in Libya, but said no to the use of ground troops. The Senate remains divided over the legality of President Barack Obama’s call for the US to actively participate in Nato’s Libyan campaign and the committee’s 14-5 vote is now likely to prompt a full debate in the Senate this week. At issue: whether the president needs the permission of Congress, under a 1973 law, the War Powers Resolution, that requires a president to obtain permission from Congress for hostilities lasting more than 60 days.
The Senate’s actions come a few days after the House refused to support Obama’s Libya programme.
Links to others sites: AFP, Times of India, Washington Post
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey, in Tunisia Monday 2 May for a meeting of regional ambassadors from Switzerland, told Swiss news agency ATS that to date a total of CHF830 million in funds linked to three Middle Eastern dictators have now been identified and therefore frozen.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry had previously said only that “tens of millions” of assets linked to Mubarak had been found in the week after the government sent the order to financial institutions to block the funds. The government had not until Monday given figures for Ben Ali or Qadaffi and those close to them.
Banks and other financial institutions must try to identify and freeze assets immediately, once the order to do so is sent by Bern. The fine for not providing information is CHF20,000 plus a fine of 10 times the value of the object, whether it is bank funds or real estate or other assets.
The amounts Calmy-Rey announced appear small compared to many estimates for the wealth of the three. The Financial Times‘s Haig Simonian in Zurich writes that the CHF360 million mentioned in connection with Qadaffi is “a surprisingly high figure, considering Colonel Muammer Gaddafi had declared he had withdrawn all funds – amounting to some $5bn – from Switzerland after a bitter dimploatic spat between the two countries two years ago.”
The Wall Street Journal points out that the Qadaffi assets in Switzerland are far smaller than the $30 billion frozen by the US.
The amounts given by Calmy-Rey, who is also Switzerland’s foreign minister:
- CHF360 million Libya’s Muammar Qadaffi, frozen 21 Frebruary 2011
- CHF410m Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, frozen 2 February 2011, about 10 percent of all Egyptian assets in Switzerland that the Swiss central bank could identify as originating from Egypt at the end of 2009.
- CHF60 Tunisia’s Ben Ali, frozen 19 January 2011: this is about 10 percent of the assets the Swiss central bank said were in Switzerland and that originated in Tunisia at the end of 2009.
The amount of money in Swiss banks, from Libya and Egypt, has fallen steadily since 2005, according to the Swiss National Bank, possibly reflecting Switzerland’s increasingly tough stance on actively identifying dictators’ assets.
In addition to the three listed above, Switzerland in 2011 also froze the assets of former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbabgbo, 19 January.
A group of ministers met Wednesday 13 April to discuss plans for Libya’s future, and they are set to meet monthly for the foreseeable future. The so-called ‘contact group’ discussed the possibility of creating an international fund to aid Libya’s eastern rebels, and the status and future of the international military aid to the country. Conspicuously absent from the meeting was former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa.
Some ministers are pushing for increased air-strikes to impose a swift and decisive change to the situation in Libya, amid fears of an expensive and bloody stalemate developing. It is British and French forces who are taking the front seat in terms of air strikes, since the recent stepping back of the US. State Department spokesman Mark Toner is quoted by Reuters as saying, “We feel like we’ve contributed a great deal to the success of this operation thus far. Our role has receded in this mission.”
Libyan rebels have recently rejected attempts from the African Union to negotiate a peace deal, declaring that they will not accept any peace deal terms that include a role for Muammar Qaddafi. According to Reuters, the eastern Libyan rebel national council are having little to no success thus far in ousting Qaddafi, despite international backing.
Links to other sites: Reuters Africa, The Guardian, CNN
Another Arab dictatorship is being rocked to the point where it appears it could fall, with Sayd al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, acknowledging publicly Monday, reports the BBC, that “that the eastern cities of Benghazi and al-Bayda had fallen to the opposition”. Several high-level Libyan diplomats have quit their posts, including the ambassador to India and work in some oil fields, most of which are in the east of the country, has been stopped. Some foreign oil companies are pulling out their expatriate staff.
Links to other sites: BBC, CS Monitor, Guardian, New York Times, Reuters
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Canadian Philippe Kirsch from Quebec, an international law expert and former judge on an International Criminal Court, reportedly has been named the arbitrator in an ongoing dispute between Switzerland and Libya.
Reuters published the news Tuesday 15 February, based on Libya reports from the foreign ministry office there.
Switzerland’s foreign affairs office has declined Swiss media requests to confirm the news.
Two previous names suggested by the countries failed to gain the approval of both: Briton Elizabeth Wilmshurst and Indian Sreenivasa Pammaraju.
The two countries agreed in August 2009 to set up an arbitration panel to resolve a series of differences that arose in the wake of the Geneva arrest of Libyan Hannibal Qadaffi, son of the country’s leader.
Two men held hostage in Libya were part of the dispute between Switzerland and Libya
They formalized the decision to have a panel in June 2010, agreeing to find an arbitor within 30 days and to resolve the dispute within 60 days.
Background, GenevaLunch
Links to other sites: Reuters, swissinfo, World Radio Geneva
Bern goes to court over Geneva police leak
Swiss parliament in session Photo ©Swiss parliament
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – The Libyan affair continues in Switzerland, even if the businessmen held hostage by Libya have returned home: the Federal Council agreed Thursday to go to court over the leak from Geneva’s police department of a police photo of Hannibal Qadaffi.
Hannibal is the son of Libya’s leader, arrested in Geneva in July 2008 on charges of abusing his staff at a city hotel. A nearly year-long investigation in Geneva has failed to turn up the person responsible for the leak.
People suspected of or charged with a crime are protected by Swiss privacy laws, but the photo of Hannibal Qadaffi was run by the Tribune de Geneve newspaper.
An arbitration panel was agreed to by both countries as part of the agreement that also saw business Max Goeldi allowed to return quickly to Switzerland, once the agreement was signed in early June. The panel will look into the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Hannibal Qadaffi and his wife Aline, in Geneva.
Such a panel had been part of an earlier agreement between then-Swiss president Hans-Rudolf Merz and Libyan authorities, but it never went beyond the two countries’ naming their representatives.
The same two arbiters have been named: Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who is British, for Switzerland, and Sreenivasa Pammaraju Rao, who is Indian, for Libya. The two must agree on a third person to be president of the panel, within 30 days, and the three then have 60 days to make decisions on the final arbitrage.
Swiss President Doris Leuthard
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A hallmark of the Swiss political system, the “collegiality” of the Federal Council or ruling seven-member cabinet, is under pressure from politicians and Swiss media following disclosures about the handling of the recently resolved Libyan affair. Politicians have expressed concern about possible military involvement. Swiss military intervention abroad is strictly limited by the country’s neutrality. Media have been insisting the disclosures show a serious lack of communication within the Federal Council.
Tuesday 22 June a permanent parliamentary group issued a terse statement to say that it met Monday with the Federal Council to review the handling of the Libyan affair. The statement noted that it had been informed “relatively early” of plans by the Defense Department to stage a rescue of the businessmen, considered hostages, if the situation developed in such a way this would be called for. The statement provides no date, however, and it is unclear when the plans were developed by the Defense Department.
Le Temps and TSR question if the plans existed when then-President Hans-Rudolf Merz flew to Libya, without informing other Federal Council members, to apologize to Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi over his son’s arrest. Was Merz aware of such plans, they ask, but given the secrecy surrounding the plans, no explanations appear likely.
Update 3 / 14 June Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss businessman Max Goeldi, freed from prison in Libya 10 June, is en route home to Switzerland, news agency AFP reports his lawyer as saying Sunday night, possibly via Tunis.
Switzerland and Libya signed a “plan of action” Sunday in Tripoli, with Germany and Spain also signatories, to end the diplomatic impasse between the Swiss and Libyan governments. Max Goeldi, Swiss businessman and ABB employee who has been held in Libya for nearly two years, is scheduled to fly home from Tripoli, via Madrid, Sunday. Goeldi’s prison sentence in Libya for visa irregularities has been at the centre of the diplomatic tussle that began with the arrest in Geneva in July 2008 of Hannibal Qadaffi, son of Libya’s leader.
Swiss Secretary for Foreign Affairs Micheline Calmy-Rey made the announcements about Goeldi’s flight home and the action plan as she came out of a meeting in Tripoli with her Libyan counterpart, Moussa Koussa. She also met with Libya’s leader Muammar Qadaffi in his reception tent, along with Spanish leader Miguel Angel Moratinos and Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, as well as other European leaders.
The plan of action includes the following:
- a tribunal will be created to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest in Geneva of Hannibal Qadaffi in July 2008, to which then-Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz agreed in principle in August 2009;
- Switzerland will offer Libya an official apology for the theft of a police mug shot of Hannibal Qadaffi from police files, and for their publication in the Tribune de Geneve newspaper, and those who stole the material will be prosecuted (it was revealed that a criminal case has already been opened);
- Max Goeldi’s request for a judicial pardon from Libya will be expedited.
TSR, Swiss public television, reports that Tripoli says Geneva has already paid CHF1.5 million euros to Hannibal Qadaffi, a sum that has not been verified and that runs counter to statements made earlier by Bern.
Swiss Secretary for Foreign Affairs Micheline Calmy-Rey made the announcements about Goeldi’s flight home and the action plan as she came out of a meeting in Tripoli with her Libyan counterpart, Moussa Koussa.
Background, GenevaLunch
Rashid Hamdani, left who was detained but for less time, with Max Goeldi, right, at the Swiss embassy in Tripoli in 2009
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss businessman Max Goeldi was released from prison in Libya Thursday 10 June, according to his lawyer, and he should be able to leave the country and return to Switzerland this weekend. He is staying in a hotel in Tripoli while paperwork for his departure is completed. TSR public television reached him at the hotel and he confirmed that he has been freed, but refused to comment otherwise. Bern has not commented either.
Goeldi is an ABB employee who has spent 692 days in prison in Libya on charges of visa irregularities, following his arrest which came soon after the arrest in Geneva of Hannibal Qadaffi, son of Libya’s leader.
Background, GenevaLunch
Libya calls on Malta to leave the Schengen area, “another form of colonialism”
Malta issues temporary visas to Libyans to avoid Swiss ban
Update 2 13:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss-German media SF has obtained a copy of court papers filed 16 March by canton Geneva showing it agrees to compensate Hannibal Qadaffi, the son of Libya’s leader, and to offer an apology for a leak from the police department. The canton has not officially confirmed or denied the report, in line with its notice in February 2010 that it would not issue any statements until Max Goeldi, a Swiss businessman serving a four-month prison term in Libya, is free. (Ed. note: the canton is holding a press conference at 16:00 as a result of the SF revelation)
The leak to which the court papers refer allowed “unflattering” photos of the man to be published in the Tribune de Genève newspaper after he was arrested in the city in July 2008. The papers filed by the canton, seen by Swiss news agency ATS, note that since it is clear the leak came from a state employee, the cantonmust take some responsibility. It asks the court to determine the share of responsibility and costs to be borne by the Tribune. It also insists that the Tribune must publish the court decision, at its own cost.
Libya has demanded that the European Union also apologize, for not issuing visas to some of its citizens, Spanish newspaper El Pais reports Libyan ambassador to Spain, Ageli Abdussalam Breni, as saying.
Update 17 March Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Libya is offering a public relations lesson in how to stay in the news, with measures unveiled almost daily for the past two weeks, to increase pressure on Switzerland to resolve the two countries’ diplomatic feud. By Friday 12 March Google alone was carrying 49.5 million entries with “Libya, Switzerland”.
Update: Tuesday 16 March Libyan Ambassador to Spain Ageli Abdussalam Breni demanded that the European Union apologize for not approving visas to Libyans on the Swiss black list.
The latest came Thursday 11 March when the Libyan ambassador to the UN in Geneva again called for Switzerland to end its ban on a number of its leaders entering the Schengen area. The previous day Libya’s ambassador to the UN in New York made a similar speech. Both events have received enormous international media coverage with headlines about rising tensions, although neither of the men’s calls contained anything new.
Libyan ambassadors have also called in the press in other European countries to argue Libya’s stance. And shortly before that Libya threatened the US if an official did not apologize for a remark taken as offensive (he did).
EU Council agrees to border measures, including some concerning Libya
Update 23:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – It took him nearly four months and several bouts of political wrangling with Switzerland, but Muammar Qadaffi, Libya’s leader, Thursday 25 February called for a holy war, or Jihad against Switzerland. The reason: the European nation’s vote in early November 2009 against the construction of new minarets [Ed. note: the vote did not ban minarets, so the existing ones will stay]. Qaddafi was addressing a large crowd from several Muslim countries, before prayers in a Benghazi square.
The Swiss government refused to comment on the Libyan leader’s call to Muslims around the world when asked by Swiss public broadcasting to do so, but Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told a Thursday meeting of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs of the European Union and Schengen Area in Brussels that Switzerland is justified in placing Qadaffi on a black list of people who are not allowed to enter the Schengen Area by way of Switzerland.
Brussels, Belgium (GenevaLunch) - The European Commission reacted to Libya’s ban on visas for Schengen residents by saying it will meet later in the week to discuss the abrupt decision by Muammar Qadaffi’s government. Cecilia Malmstroem of Sweden, the commissioner for home affairs, provided a more immediate response: “The European Commission deplores the unilateral and disproportionate decision by Libyan authorities to suspend the delivery of visas to EU Schengen countries’ citizens. The commission also regrets that travelers who legally obtained visas before the suspension measure were refused entry when arriving in Libya.”
It is unclear if the move includes diplomats, but there are reports that people arriving in Tripoli with visas are being refused entry at the airport.
The visa ban appears to be in retaliation for an unconfirmed ban on travel to Switzerland, a member of the Schengen area, by close to 200 Libyans. Switzerland has not issued any information along these lines and the Swiss government has refused to confirm the information, which was reported by a Libyan newspaper generally considered close to one of Qadaffi’s sons.
Muammar Qadaffi, Libya’s leader, failed in his bid to win a second term as chairman of the African Union, to Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika. Qadaffi is described by allAfrica after the vote: he “was seen restless and irritated and called an emergency midnight press conference at the summit venue. Qaddafi blasted African leaders and dubbed the AU as a failed institution.” He is now setting his sights on becoming chairman of the Arab League, he told the press conference.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, NY Times, Zambian Watchdog
Tripoli, Libya (GenevaLunch) – Rachid Hamdani, one of two Swiss businessmen who have been held by Libya for 18 months, has reportedly had his prison sentence overturned for staying illegally in the country. He and Max Goldi, the other Swiss, appeared Saturday and Sunday in a court to where appeals in their cases were being heard. The two then returned to the Swiss Embassy, where they have been staying. The Swiss government has confirmed the news.
The two are also charged with illegal business activities, and these charges will be heard again 6 and 7 February, according to Hamdani’s lawyer, reports TSR.
Background, GenevaLunch
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s woes with Libya continue this week, with Tripoli postponing the trials of two Swiss businessmen. The two are to stand trial for visa and tax irregularities, Libya has said. They were arrested shortly after the arrest in Geneva in July 2008 of Hannibal Qadaffi, son of the country’s leader. Libya in early January issued a list of reasons why the son should not have been arrested; it continues to argue, as it did in 2008, that he should have received diplomatic immunity.
The son is reported 6 January by Swiss media to have hosted singer Beyoncé for New Year’s Eve festivities at the Nikki Beach Club in Saint-Barthélemy, the Antilles, a week after he avoided police charges in Britain.
Update 2 22:50 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Reports were published Tuesday evening 1 December by several international news agencies that two Swiss businessmen, Max Goeldi and Rachid Hamdani, have been sentenced to 16 months in prison and fined $1,671 each by a Libyan court. Reuters received an e-mail confirmation from the Swiss foreign affairs ministry late Tuesday night confirming the news. The men have been sentenced on visa irregularities charges, according to the Swiss spokesman, Reuters reports. They are currently both at the Swiss Embassy. The two have been unable to leave the country since July 2008, shortly after Hannibal Qadaffi, the son of Libya’s leader, was arrested in Geneva for abusing his staff at a hotel. The arrest sparked a diplomatic row which has not been resolved, and the new sentences could strain tensions even further.
The two men, in Libya on business at the time of their arrest, were at the centre of intense negotiations in August 2009, when Muammar Qadaffi appears to have promised to help release them soon. Agencies reporting the story quote an unnamed Libyan official who also says the men face another trial, but no details were provided.
TSR, Swiss public television, early Tuesday evening reported that an official at ABB, the multinational that employs Goeldi, confirmed to the station that the men had been sentenced.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Details are surfacing slowly but steadily in the strange saga of the two Swiss men held by the Libyan government and Switzerland’s efforts to bring them home. The latest wrinkle is that the Swiss government has confirmed media reports from Wednesday 9 September that one of the two has had private contacts with the family of the Libyan prime minister and that he is living some 200 km from Tripoli, but reports in regularly to the Swiss embassy. The other man, ABB employee Max Goeldi, has opted to live at the embassy, and he has accepted the embassy’s offer to give him small amounts of work to do to fill his time.
Earlier media reports and government information indicated that the two men have been living at the Swiss embassy in Tripoli.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Relations between Switzerland and Libya remain strained, with Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi repeating a call he made at the G8 summit in Italy in July 2009, for Switzerland to be considered a non-country and its linguistic districts to be shared among its neighbours. The rhetoric itself has ruffled few feathers, given Qadaffi’s widespread reputation for stepping outside the usual boundaries of diplomatic talk, but Libya’s upcoming turn in a role at the United Nations General Assembly, which opens its new session 15 September, gives him a platform.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The “Falcon”, a Swiss military plane used by the Federal Council, flew back from Tripoli, Libya, to Switzerland during the night of 27-28 August, carrying the delegation from the president’s office who flew there to seek the return of two businessmen held hostage for over a year. The two men did not return with them. Bern issued a brief statement saying that the plane is needed for other purposes but that “the preparations for their return are continuing.”
The men have been held since July 2008 as part of the fallout from an incident involving the arrest of Hannibal Qadaffi, son of the Libyan leader, and his wife at the President Wilson Hotel in Geneva for abusing their staff.
One way to salvation
Update 10:50 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz signed an agreement yesterday 20 August in a surprise visit to Tripoli, Libya during which Switzerland apologized for the “unjustified and unnecessary” detention of Hannibal, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi. This puts an end to the ongoing dispute between the two countries that was detonated by the arrest of Hannibal and his wife in a Geneva hotel room in July 2008, where they were allegedly mistreating their servants.
The agreement allows two Swiss businessmen, who had been denied exit permits, to leave Libya, and all consular and commercial ties between the two countries will resume, including commercial air links.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Libya withdrew more than CHF5 billion in assets held in Swiss bank accounts in 2008, wire service ATS reports, in a story carried by several Swiss papers. The sharp scaledown in holdings plus the fact that the new Swiss charge d’affaires has not been able allowed to present his credentials in Tripoli could mean that Libya is carrying out threats it made in July 2008 after Hannibal Qadaffi, the son of the country’s leader, was arrested in Geneva. In October 2008 the Libyan wire service published a report saying that Libya was removing the cash it had in Swiss accounts, which it estimated to be CHF7 billion.
Geneva, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Swiss public television station TSR reports that according to its sources Libya’s Qadaffi family has filed several charges against the state of Geneva, linked to the arrest last July in the city of Hannibal Qadaffi and his wife over an incident that involved one of their staff. Relations have been cold since then between Switzerland and Libya but a spokesperson for Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey says that the legal action is a good thing because it moves the dispute out of the diplomatic sphere and into a judicial one.
Muammar Qadaffi, Libya’s leader, has been elected president of the 53-member African Union, in Ethiopia. He called for a United States of Africa, an idea he has long supported. All Africa, BBC
Zurich, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Libya has given notice to the airline Swiss that it must end its single weekly flight into the country, apparently part of the continuing fallout from the affair in 2007 where Hannibal, a son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, was arrested with his wife in Geneva.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government said Saturday that it has received no official word from Libya confirming either of the two media reports, first in the Libyan and then in Swiss media, that Libya is stopping oil supplies to Switzerland and withdrawing money from its Swiss bank accounts.
