TRIPOLI, Nov 19: Muammar Qadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam has been captured, Libya’s new authorities announced on Saturday, ending a three-month manhunt for the murdered dictator’s longtime heir apparent.

Video footage showed the younger Qadhafi, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, being hauled off into captivity in a northwestern hill town after getting off a flight from the desert south where he was seized.

A fist was thrown as Saif al-Islam was mobbed by a large crowd of curious onlookers, many of them veterans of the eight-month uprising, but he was spared the brutal lynching dealt out to his father.

Sporting a brown cloak and headdress, Saif showed no sign of emotion as he braved the surging spectators at the small airport terminal in Zintan, a mainly Berber town in the Nafusa Mountains southwest of Tripoli that was a launch pad for the rebels in their victorious push on the capital.

The 39-year-old who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), was “arrested in southern Libya”, Mohammed al-Allagui, justice minister in the National Transitional Council (NTC), told AFP without elaborating on the circumstances or even the date of his capture.

As the last top figure of the Qadhafi family to have evaded capture or not to have escaped abroad, news of his arrest was greeted in Tripoli and in Benghazi by gunmen firing into the air in celebration and the honking of cars.

It came a day before the NTC was expected to name a new government and three months after Saif al-Islam was last seen in public.

The operations chief of the victorious rebels in Zintan, Bashir Taib, told a news conference that his fighters had arrested Saif along with three aides in the Ubari region of southern Libya, an escape route to Algeria and Niger.

A Libyan television channel, Al-Ahrar, broadcast footage of Saif heavily bearded and leaning on the end of a bed, with three fingers of his right hand bandaged and a blanket on his legs.

The urbane Qadhafi son, who was normally clean-shaven in his days at the heart of the regime, was long seen as a potential reformer from within but proved a diehard apologist of brutal repression in the face of the popular uprising launched in mid-February.

The ICC issued warrants on June 27 against Saif al-Islam, as well as his father and Abdullah al-Senussi, the late dictator’s intelligence chief, on charges of crimes against humanity in crushing anti-regime protests.

Mr Taib said he had no information on Senussi’s current whereabouts, but the Tripoli council of former rebel fighters said he had been sighted in Al-Girah region, also in Libya’s Saharan desert south.

The ICC said Libya has an obligation to surrender Saif but did not exclude the possibility of a trial in Libya.

“The Libyan authorities have an obligation to cooperate with the court, including with respect to the arrest and surrender of Saif al-Islam to the court as indicated in the UN’s resolution,” ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdallah told AFP.

But he added: “If Libyan authorities believe that a trial at national level is a better solution, they can ask that the case not be admitted in The Hague, based on the court’s complementary principle.

“If they want a trial in Libya, they must submit a request for dismissal and procedures in Libya must be conducted on the same charges as those contained in the warrant of the ICC,” he said.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is to travel to Libya next week for talks on Saif al-Islam’s case.

Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, the Canadian who headed the Nato-led air war in Libya, said a fair trial for Saif al-Islam was “critical” to show the new government’s legitimacy.

“Saif was (Qadhafi)’s number one son... and was (among) the most involved in bringing violence to the people,” Gen Bouchard said.

“His arrest is critical in that it helps this country bring closure. But it’s also critical that he gets a fair trial.”

The ICC’s chief prosecutor predicted on November 9 that the arrest of Saif was just a matter of time amid mounting reports that he was attempting to negotiate his surrender.

“The question is not if he will be arrested, it’s when,” Moreno-Ocampo told a news conference. “Saif will face justice, that’s his destiny.” Saif’s representatives had asked what would happen to him if he appeared before judges and the various conviction and acquittal possibilities, the prosecutor told the UN Security Council which referred the Libya case to the ICC.

ICC investigators have visited Libya to collect more evidence in the case against Saif and also into allegations of mass rapes by Qadhafi forces during the crackdown against protesters before the revolt turned into full-blown civil war.

Nato voiced hope that the Libyan authorities and the ICC would ensure that justice is served.“We trust that the Libyan authorities and the International Criminal Court will ensure that justice runs its course, so that the new Libya can be built on the rule of law and respect for human rights,” alliance spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.—AFP