Foreign Minister Carr cautiously welcomes imminent lawyer release
EMILY BOURKE: After almost a month in detention in Libya, Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor could be released within hours.
The Foreign Minister Bob Carr says there’s a detailed operation in place to get the four-person legal team from the International Criminal Court out of Libya.
Melinda Taylor has been held by Libyan authorities who allege she was spying by carrying a video camera and passing on coded letters to her client Saif al-Islam, the son of former dictator Moamar Gaddafi.
International legal experts say they’re still shocked that staff from the ICC were locked up in the first place.
Will Ockenden has this report.
WILL OCKENDEN: The four members of the legal team including Australian Melinda Taylor have been held in Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, since June 7.
The International Criminal Court expects them to be released sometime in the next day.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Bob Carr is cautiously welcoming the news.
BOB CARR: We’re very happy with the statement by the ICC. It’s something we’ve worked very hard for for about two weeks now. There’s a detailed timetable for the handing over of the four detainees in Zintan and for them being taken out of Libya on an Italian military aircraft. But we’re cautious at this stage and we’ll be really happy when it comes to fruition.
WILL OCKENDEN: Bob Carr says the release timetable has been worked out between the Libyans and the International Criminal Court.
BOB CARR: If it’s adhered to the four detainees should be released within hours.
WILL OCKENDEN: The International Criminal Court says its president is flying to Libya to thank the authorities for the speed of dealing with the issue.
A spokesman for the court, Fadi el-Abdallah, says there were misunderstandings between the ICC and the Libyans.
FADO EL-ABDALLAH: It’s normal that someone, a high level delegation from the court, goes to Libya to thank the Libyan authorities who put indeed all these measures in place in order to secure the release of our staff members.
WILL OCKENDEN: While the International Criminal Court has expressed regret for the incident, it hasn’t admitted any wrongdoing.
It will investigate its legal team’s behaviour when they finally return from Libyan soil.
They have been accused of carrying a pen camera and attempting to give Saif al-Islam a coded letter from his former right-hand man who’s on the run.
Saif al-Islam is Gaddafi’s son, who the ICC wants to prosecute for war crimes. Melinda Taylor and her team had been in Libya to help prepare Saif al-Islam’s defence.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr says there appear to have been misunderstandings between the ICC and the Libyans.
BOB CARR: I’ve never contemplated the view that she has done something wrong, but we wanted a better relationship between the ICC and the Libyan authorities. Clearly the Libyan authorities had disagreements with the ICC and that’s why we’ve worked hard to bring about direct talks between them and The Hague and they reached an agreement.
WILL OCKENDEN: Donald Rothwell from Australia National University’s College of Law says the ICC needs to send staff into trouble spots to prepare a defence.
But he says it’s extraordinary the court allowed its staff to get caught up in the volatile situation in Libya.
DONALD ROTHWELL: The ICC since 2011 has had a number of engagements with the former and now the current Libyan regime and in fact there’s evidence that an advance party was sent to Libya in April or May to discuss some of these issues.
So I think it still remains something of a mystery as to why these matters were not fully resolved when Ms Taylor and her colleagues entered Libya in early June.
The other explanation of course is that the situation remains just so fluid in Libya in terms of a central government which has only recently come to power which is seeking to establish new governmental and legal structures following the Gaddafi regime and its fall, but also that there remains significant power sources in the other parts of the country and in this case Zintan, which is where Gaddafi was being held.
WILL OCKENDEN: Donald Rothwell says the allegations of video cameras and coded letters still haven’t been sorted out.
He says part of the confusion is the different levels of government in Libya.
DONALD ROTHWELL: If we reflect upon some of the statements being made by the representatives of the so-called Zintan Brigade regarding this matter over the past two weeks, which at times have been quite at odds with the reassurance that the Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr received from the central Libyan government, I think that yes we do have different versions of the events and different interpretations of the legal regime coming out from these different spokespeople.
WILL OCKENDEN: Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Melinda Taylor’s family are keenly awaiting her return.
BOB CARR: It’s better news than we might have expected this early in the piece. We’ll celebrate as I know her family will when she’s on her way back to The Hague and that reunion with Geoff and their two-year-old that we’ve been working to bring about for quite some days now.
EMILY BOURKE: That’s the Foreign Minister Bob Carr ending Will Ockenden’s report.
SOURCE:The World TODAY
