Tunisia Court Acquits Gadhafi PM Mahmoudi
A Tunisian court cleared Libyan former prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi on Tuesday on a charge he had crossed illegally into Tunisia as he fled Libya last year, his lawyer said.
"The court ... has acquitted al-Mahmoudi and so we are demanding his immediate release," lawyer Mabrouk Kourchid said after the hearing in the southern city of Tozeur. "There is no legal reason to keep him in prison."
Tunisian authorities gave no indication about whether they intended to free Mahmoudi and he remains the subject of two extradition requests from Libya, which he fled following the collapse of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.
The 70-year-old former prime minister, who has been detained since his September 21 arrest on the southwestern border with Algeria, appeared in court after being transferred from prison by ambulance.
Although his extradition has been approved by Tunisian courts, the country's interim president Fouad Mebazaa last year declined to sign extradition papers and his successor Moncef Marzouki has told Tripoli he would be returned when conditions were in place for a "fair trial".
Mahmoudi is appealing extradition on the grounds that he has applied for refugee status and could face execution if sent back to his homeland.
Libya is seeking Mahmoudi on charges of inciting rape in the town of Zuwarah in northwestern Libya during the anti-Gadhafi revolution, his defense team has said.
The uprising erupted in February last year in the eastern city of Benghazi and later spread across the entire country, one of a series of popular revolts dubbed the Arab Spring.
The bloody conflict ended with the capturing and killing of the former Libyan leader in his hometown of Sirte on October 20.
Tunisia provided refuge to tens of thousands of Libyan civilians who fled the months of fighting that led to the collapse of Gadhafi’s regime.
Source: Agence France Presse
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