The tribunal session for the top security official of the Gaddafi regime, Abdullah Senussi, scheduled for Monday afternoon, has been postponed again as confirmed by Libya Alahrar’s correspondent.
Senussi who was considered to be the second in command after Muammar Gaddafi during the final years of the former regime in Libya, has been accused of several crimes in front of court including mass murder.
This is the fifth time the trial session has been postponed, and Senussi’s attorney Ahmed Nashad has said that despite the presence of the lead judge, other court members were absent in addition to the representatives of the public prosecution as well the defendant himself. Senussi’s defense team has previously accused the executive authority of preventing the attendance of their client in previous sessions, despite the public prosecution confirming that they had officially addressed the relevant security authorities regarding the matter.
Abdullah Senussi was the head of intelligence for many years during the dictatorship of Gaddafi, in addition to being Gaddafi’s brother-in-law. Following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Senussi fled outside the country before being arrested in Mauritania after arriving from Morocco carrying a forged passport and handed over to Libya thereafter, where he faces serious criminal accusations including the crackdown on protesters during the February 17th revolution in 2011, as well the infamous Abu Salim Massacre of 1996 in which more than 1200 political prisoners were murdered in the timeframe of a few hours.
As with other former regime officials, Senussi’s trial has been a legal saga. After being convicted and sentenced to death by a court in 2015, the death sentence was not executed and charges were dropped by a second court ruling in 2019, that was later overturned by the Supreme Court which called for a retrial.
Source: Libya Alahrar
