George Joffe, a Libya expert and research fellow at Cambridge University, said that either NATO bombing or an internal coup was most likely to end Gaddafi’s rule, not negotiation. “There is a growing sense in his entourage that they’re in an impasse,” Joffe said.
Prosecutors in The Hague said Monday that they had collected enough evidence to request arrest warrants for Gaddafi; his British-educated son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi; and his intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi.
But an arrest warrant may have little immediate effect on Gaddafi’s movements or power. An arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was issued in 2009, and he remains his country’s head of state. Bashir has visited other African countries since the warrant was issued — including some that have signed on to the International Criminal Court — but has not been arrested.
The prosecutors’ announcement came a day after Britain’s top military commander called for NATO to expand its military campaign to prevent a stalemate. Gen. David Richards told the Sunday Telegraph that he wanted to increase the range of targets NATO could hit.
That threat seemed to unsettle Libya’s government. It announced Monday that the country’s telecommunications workers and their families — 45,000 men, women and children in all — had volunteered to serve as human shields to protect key infrastructure from bombing. It was impossible to verify the claim.
The legal proceedings against the three officials likely eliminated Saif al-Islam Gaddafi as a potential Libyan negotiating partner, analysts said.
Before protests and rebellion erupted in Libya in February, the son had been seen by many in the West as the best hope for reform in Libya. Fluent in English and trained at the London School of Economics, he hobnobbed with much of Britain’s high society.
But many of Libya’s rebels and Western officials saw him in a new light after he gave two bellicose speeches in the early days of the protests.
The request for an arrest warrant validates “the idea that Saif has made the transformation from being a reformer to being in it up to his knees,” said Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.
Libya, which has not signed the International Criminal Court treaty, said before the prosecutors’ announcement that it would “ignore” any warrants that were issued.
“We will not show much attention to the decision,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, alleging that the court — which has carried out most of its work in Africa – unfairly targets leaders on that continent. The court “is a baby for the European Union,” he added.
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