The prize of former rebel fighters who triumphed in catching him as he tried to flee the country, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is being kept in a secret location somewhere among Zintan's sandstone and concrete buildings. The one-time heir apparent remains out of reach of the government in Tripoli and even further from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which also wants to try him. His captors, distrustful of a government they say is failing the state, say any tribunal he will face should be in Zintan.
If the country's leaders do not hold a trial soon over crimes committed before and during the 2011 uprising that toppled his father, they will do so themselves, they say. "If there is no trial for him, the Libyan people will bring him to justice," said Alajmi Ali Ahmed al-Atiri, the man who led the patrol that caught Saif al-Islam in the Sahara desert. "We will give the Libyan government a chance to bring him to trial. If they delay it, frankly we will say that we, as Libyan revolutionaries, will bring Saif to the revolutionary court. It will be a public and just trial."
Such declarations highlight the limited power the central government has on the fighters who chased out Gaddafi and now believe they deserve to be the real beneficiaries of the 2011 uprising. Zintan, a dusty Arab garrison town sprawled atop a steep-walled plateau in the mainly ethnic Berber Western Mountains, played an outsized role in the 2011 war. Two years ago, its fighters came down from the highlands, broke Gaddafi's defences along the coast and led the charge into Tripoli. Today, they remain organised and contemptuous of a central administration that, faced with assassinations, attacks on national and Western targets and a mass jail break, is losing its grip over the oil-producing state.
Tripoli is already involved in a legal dispute with The Hague, which is seeking Saif al-Islam for war crimes. But the real tussle is at home, where the government has unsuccessfully tried to move him to a specially-built jail in the capital. His impending trial, whenever and wherever it may be, will be emblematic of who has the real power on the ground - the frontline rebels who fought Gaddafi's forces or Tripoli's politicians, who already face increasing popular discontent. "The ball is now in the government's court and the government is very fragile - it is probably going through its most fragile phase ever in this transition," Human Rights Watch Libya researcher Hanan Salah said. "This is a case of one very prominent detainee but think about the so many more detainees being held by other militias that are given some sort of legitimacy or not. It showcases where the country is at in this stage of its transition."
"MICKEY MOUSE TRIALS"
