LONDON — The international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity issued against Moammar Gadhafi and members of his family has further isolated the Libyan leader but may also increase his determination to fight on rather than relinquish power or seek sanctuary outside the country.
With the military standoff between NATO-led and pro-Gadhafi forces surpassing 100 days, the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Monday named Gadhafi, his son Seif Islam Gadhafi and brother-in-law Abdullah Sanoussi as wanted men. The court alleged the leaders ordered or encouraged their forces to gun down and imprison hundreds of Libyan civilians in the early days of the uprising that broke out in February.
Gadhafi was responsible for the brutal suppression as Libya’s supreme leader, his son as its “de facto prime minister” and Sanoussi as its ruthless chief of military intelligence, the court said.
The warrants will be difficult to enforce. The 69-year-old Gadhafi’s precise whereabouts are unknown except to his inner circle. NATO countries have shown no desire to add ground troops to the fight. And although rebel forces welcomed the indictments, their ability to capture the heavily defended capital, Tripoli, remains a tall order.
“It has symbolic significance,” said Sha shank Joshi, an expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. Gadhafi has little motivation now to surrender, Joshi said, and the options of whether to fight on or give in “are the same as they were yesterday.”
But as a specter hanging over Gadhafi, the warrant could complicate any attempts at a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. If the longtime leader were ever to entertain the notion of stepping aside and slipping into exile, a deal would have to address his likely insistence on being shielded from arrest.
“It makes it a little more difficult but not impossible,” Joshi said. “We shouldn’t go overboard and say this excludes any political settlement, any kind of exile. But it does raise the costs Gadhafi has to consider.”
Gadhafi may also take comfort from the fate of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, the only other head of state to be wanted by the ICC.
Bashir’s warrant was issued more than two years ago, but he remains free and has traveled without impediment to other African nations — some of which are among the scores of nations that are not signatories of the ICC.
Gadhafi enjoys support from a few African countries that have benefited from his largesse, and he could seek safe haven in one of those.
In anticipation of the order, Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told reporters Sunday that Tripoli did not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court.
“The ICC has no legitimacy whatsoever,” Ibrahim said. “We will deal with it.”
But in the rebel-held western mountains, opposition fighters and their supporters cheered and fired off their AK-47s in celebration at the news.
“He deserves more than being taken to jail,” said Mohammad Adel, a 21-year-old engineering student in the city of Zintan. “He deserves to be treated like Saddam Hussein. He deserves to be hanged.”
