ICC lawyer seeks warrants for Gadhafi, son

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, May 16 (UPI) -- The International Criminal Court top prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, son Saif, and the Libyan intelligence chief Monday.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said his office had "strong evidence" the two Gadhafis and Abdullah al-Senussi ordered attacks on civilians in the weeks after protests began seeking the elder Gadhafi's ouster, the Financial Times reported.

"We have direct evidence of each of them involved in the crimes," he said, accusing the men of crimes against humanity.

Gadhafi "personally ordered attacks on unarmed Libyan civilians," in which government forces shot demonstrators, fired heavy weapons on funeral processions and "placed snipers to kill those leaving mosques after prayers," the prosecutor said.

The Libyan government dismissed the warrant request as irrelevant, the Financial Times reported.

Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said the ICC, based at The Hague, Netherlands, was "not important" to Gadhafi's regime, which was working with the U.N. human rights council instead.

"The procedures of the ICC have been questioned by many other countries, not only Libya," Kaim said. "We still believe the ICC has been designed as a baby for the European Union and it has been designed for the African leaders and politicians."

In a letter to the court Monday, Ocampo said he would present a case to the Pretrial Chamber of the International Criminal Court and ask judges to issue arrest warrants against three unnamed individuals "who appear to bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Libya since 15 February 2011."

"The evidence collected establishes reasonable grounds to believe that widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population have been and continue to be committed in Libya, including murder and persecution as crimes against humanity," Ocampo said.

Ocampo said in his letter allegations against government forces included using civilians as human shields, blockading humanitarian aid, removing the injured from hospitals on claims they were anti-government agents and using weapons "such as cluster munitions, multiple rocket launchers and mortars, and other forms of heavy weaponry, in crowded urban areas, in particular Misurata," the letter said.

The number of people who have died since the uprising began "is in the thousands," Ocampo said, and the number of people displaced numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

NATO forces charged with protecting Libyan citizens have conducted 6,808 sorties over Libya since taking over the military operation, called Operation Unified Protector, the military alliance said on its Web site.

Among the key targets hit Sunday were surface-to-air missile launchers in Tripoli and Sirte, self-propelled artillery pieces in Sirte and Misurata, ammunition storage facilities in Hun and an armored personnel carrier in Sirte.