Swiss businessman in Gaddafi row to serve jail sentence (2nd Roundup)

Feb 22, 2010, 17:56 GMT

Brussels/Tripoli - Max Goldi, one of two Swiss businessmen trapped in Libya since 2008, has left the Swiss Embassy in Tripoli to serve four months in prison, Libya's foreign ministry announced Monday.

Relations between Switzerland and Libya have soured since July 2008, when police in Geneva questioned Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi's son, Hannibal, and his wife following a complaint that they had abused domestic staff at their hotel.

Soon after, Libya prevented the two Swiss businessmen from leaving the country, and subsequently tried them on visa violations.

Khaled Kaim, secretary general of the Libyan foreign ministry, said Goldi had been transferred to the custody of Libyan police, and that he would have the right to appeal his sentence again.

Rachid al-Hamdani, the other Swiss businessman who had been sheltering in the Embassy since 2008, also left the Swiss embassy in Tripoli on Monday, traveling by land to Tunisia, his lawyer, Salih al-Zahaf, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Their departure from the Swiss Embassy in Tripoli followed a Libyan ultimatum threatening reprisals if the Swiss did not hand over the pair by 1000 GMT.

Earlier this month, an appeals court overturned al-Hamdani's sentence to 16 months in prison on visa charges, and reduced Goldi's sentence to four months.

Libyan Foreign Minister Mousa Kousa summoned ambassadors from EU countries on Sunday night to demand they put pressure on Switzerland to hand over Goldi to Libyan police and to let al-Hamdani leave the country by midday Monday, Libya's official JANA news agency reported.

'Procedures will be taken if the embassy does not do what is required by the deadline,' Koussa warned.

'The Swiss embassy is deliberately violating the law and international conventions through its continued 'detention' of the two,' the foreign minister charged. '(The Swiss) are deliberately escalating the crisis.'

The diplomatic dispute over the fate of the two businessmen escalated last week when a Libyan official said the country would stop issuing travel visas to nationals of 25 European countries, in reaction to Switzerland's decision to ban more than 180 Libyan officials from its territory.

Since then a number of European Union countries - notably Spain, Germany and Italy - tried and failed to resolve the controversy.

'We have urged Libya to withdraw this unilateral action, which we think is disproportionate, and we've urged Switzerland to continue with the negotiations' towards a final agreement, said the EU's foreign policy supremo Catherine Ashton after chairing a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Brussels.

Ashton added that the EU's interior ministers - due to meet in Brussels on Thursday - will return on the issue.

Switzerland in November asked the 25 European countries that make up the Schengen area to restrict visas to Libyan passport holders.

Following that request, Libyan Prime Minister Baghadadi al- Mahmoudi and other senior officials were denied Schengen visas, a refusal that Libya's deputy prime minister, Khalid Kaim, blamed on the Swiss.

Italy, which has close business ties with Libya, protested the Swiss visa restrictions last week, saying Switzerland was holding Schengen countries 'hostage' in its dispute over the two businessmen.

Foreign minister Franco Frattini told reporters in Brussels that his Swiss colleague Micheline Calmy-Rey ignored his written request not to issue a Schengen 'black list' against Libyan officials.

'I was deceived by this,' he said.

Frattini said excluding people such as Gaddafi, Kousa and the current president of the United Nations' General Assembly, Libyan ambassador Ali Abdussalam Treki, was 'something that frankly merits a reflection and a correction.'

But a Swiss government spokesman said there would be no change in its visa procedures for Libyan nationals.