Warrants sought for Gadhafi, kin

TRIPOLI, Libya – Prosecutors asked judges of the International Criminal Court on Monday to issue arrest warrants for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, his son and brother-in-law, further isolating the autocratic ruler who has proved hard to dislodge despite NATO airstrikes and popular uprisings.

A legal brief presented to judges accused the three of crimes against humanity by killing civilians in a bid to crush demonstrations that they feared would unseat them, like the protests that ousted longtime rulers in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, argued that Gadhafi planned to answer critics with violence even before the first anti-government crowds gathered in Libya in mid-February. Ocampo charted a timeline for Gadhafi’s actions and sketched out a division of responsibility among the Libyan ruler, his son Seif Islam, and brother-in-law Abdullah Sanoussi.

Judges at the court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, will take at least three weeks before ruling on the request, Moreno-Ocampo said in an interview. But his move was certain to please officials of NATO, which is conducting a bombing campaign under a U.N. mandate to protect Libyan civilians. Over the weekend, a senior British military official warned that Gadhafi might be able to hold on if NATO does not escalate airstrikes.

“NATO doubtless will appreciate the ICC investigation and indictment of top Libyan leaders, including Gadhafi,” said David Scheffer, a former Clinton administration ambassador-at-large for war crimes, who now teaches international law at Northwestern University.

Moreno-Ocampo said he had interviewed Libyans who had fled the country, including eyewitnesses who could testify to instructions given by Gadhafi, Seif Islam and Sanoussi to kill and imprison protesters. He refused to reveal their names and declined to comment when asked whether Gadhafi’s former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who fled to London, had provided evidence.

In Tripoli, a government spokesman said the court had reached “incoherent conclusions.”

“We have never, in any stage of the crisis in Libya, ordered the killing of civilians or hired mercenaries against our people,” spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said in a statement. “In fact, it is the rebels who took up arms in the middle of our peaceful cities and caused the death of many people and invited fighters from several nationalities to join them.”

The Libyan government has “long requested fact-finding missions, international observers and experts to counterbalance the biased and inaccurate media reports about events in Libya. No one listened,” Ibrahim said.