The Daily Star - Lebanese ICC interpreter to be released by Libya, June 12 2012

BEIRUT: Lebanon has been informed that Lebanese Helene Assaf, who is in the custody of Libyan authorities, will be released along with her companion after probes have been completed, the National News Agency said Tuesday.

The NNA said Lebanon’s Charge d’Affaires Hasan Saleh informed Lebanon’s Foreign Affairs Ministry that Assaf was in good health and would be released soon after the completion of investigations.Assaf and Taylor are detained over allegations that they had smuggled documents to Moammar Gadhafi’s detained son Saif al-Islam Gadhafi.

Speaking to The Daily Star Tuesday, Assaf’s sister, May, said she believed the interpreter and her colleague Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor at the International Criminal Court went missing late last week.

“My last communication with her was Thursday morning and her husband informed me Sunday that she had been kidnapped, so I assume this happened sometime between Thursday and Sunday,” she said.

She said Lebanon’s Foreign Affairs Ministry had informed her Tuesday that her sister’s case was being followed up.

Meanwhile, a delegation from the International Criminal Court Tuesday visited their colleagues after being prevented from entering Zintan by a local militia which closed roads into the town because of tribal clashes in the area earlier Tuesday.

Human rights groups, the court in The Hague and the Australian government have all demanded that they be released immediately, but Libyan prosecutors say Taylor and Assaf will be held for at least 45 days while they are investigated.

“The delegation as well as ambassadors for their [the detained ICC staff] countries visited them,” said Ahmad al-Gehani, a Libyan lawyer in charge of the Saif al-Islam case who liaises between the government and the ICC.

“They are well, they are in a guesthouse, not in a prison. They have food, water and are being treated well.”

Zintan is effectively outside the control of the central government. It is the brigade in Zintan, which captured al-Islam in November and has since refused to transfer him to the capital, which is, de facto, in charge.

Even before the ICC staff were detained, the court was involved in a tug of war with the Libyan authorities over where Saif al-Islam should stand trial.

He is wanted by the ICC for crimes during the uprising that ended his father’s 42-year rule last year. Libya’s new rulers insist he should be tried in his home country.

An ICC team, including Taylor and Assaf, had been meeting him in Zintan under an arrangement with the Libyan authorities for him to have access to ICC-appointed defense lawyers.

In The Hague, an ICC spokesman repeated the ICC’s stance that the detention of its staff was illegal because they have immunity from prosecution.

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