Tunisia jails Gaddafi’s ex-prime minister

By The Newsroom
Published 22nd Sep 2011, 22:47 BST
Libya’s neighbour Tunisia jailed Muammar al-Gaddafi’s former prime minister yesterday, and Libya’s new rulers said they were tightening their grip on the desert towns where the former dictator himself may be hiding.

In the highest profile detention of a Gaddafi associate to date, a Tunisian court sentenced Al Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi to six months in jail on charges of illegally entering the country on Wednesday evening.

The National Transitional Council, Libya’s de facto government, said it was consolidating its grip on Sabha and other oasis towns in the far south of the country which had sided with Col Gaddafi.

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“Our revolutionaries are controlling 100 per cent of Sabha city, although there are some pockets of resistance by snipers,” NTC military spokesman Ahmed Bani told reporters in the capital, Tripoli.

Until now some parts of Sabha, the traditional base for Col Gaddafi’s own tribe about 500 miles south of Tripoli, had been occupied by fighters loyal to him.