Abuja: Niger authorities have said that it would not extradite slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi Gaddafi even though he violated his asylum conditions with “subversive” comments in a television interview.
“Our position remains the same, we will hand Saadi Gaddafi to a government that has an independent and impartial justice system,” The New York Post quoted government spokesman Marou Amadou, as saying.
Saadi recently told Al Arabiya television in a telephone interview that he would return to his country and warned of leading an uprising against its new rulers.
“There is a rebellion that is going on day after day, and there will be a rebellion in the entire country,” Saadi said, adding that the Libyans were ruled “by gangs”.
According to the report, Libya`s ruling Transitional National Council (TNC) responded with a renewed call to the Niger authorities to extradite Saadi, saying that relations between the two neighbors were at risk.
Amadou said that the comments were “subversive and unfortunate” and that all former close aides to the slain ruler who had taken refuge in Niger “must abstain from all agitation, all subversive behaviour.”
“We would like to say to the TNC that Niger’s government in no way approved or prompted this business, and we also are badly disappointed,” Amadou said.
“It is with great bitterness that I say that Saadi Gaddafi, in predicting an imminent uprising in Libya, has contravened the terms and conditions under which we took him in.”
But "our position is simple, we cannot deliver someone to a place where he risks being put to death and where he is not likely to have a dignified trial,” he added.
Amadou added that Niger had authorised the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take over the case, but it had not responded.
ANI
