THE Libyan spy chief who has been suspected of masterminding the Lockerbie bombing was arrested yesterday in Mauritania.
Abdullah al-Senussi, who served more than 30 years as the late Muammar Gadaffi’s right-hand man, was held at the airport in Nouakchott, the capital of the west African nation, after flying in from Morocco.
He is said to have been carrying a false Malian passport and was arrested with a man believed to be his son.
Senussi was one of the most influential and notorious figures in Libya’s recent bloody history. As Gadaffi’s brother-in-law and most senior intelligence officer, he was privy to the regime’s darkest secrets.
His reputation for ruthlessness and brutality was widely known in western diplomatic circles. At home he inspired fear and hatred among Libyans.
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Senussi fled Libya last year when Gadaffi was ousted and later killed after a popular uprising and months of bitter fighting.
He is believed by British and American intelligence chiefs to have chaired a fateful meeting in 1988 which then led to the destruction of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie with the loss of 270 lives.
As head of the Libyan external security service, he was thought to have recruited Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a fellow intelligence officer, who was convicted of the attack in 2001.
Senussi was never charged over Lockerbie but was convicted in absentia for his role in a related terrorist attack, the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger in which a further 170 people were murdered.
Last year Senussi was charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for what it claims was his “crucial” role in suppressing the popular revolt which saw Gadaffi overthrown.
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The ICC says that along with Saif Gadaffi, the dictator’s son, he was an “indirect perpetrator of crimes against humanity of murder and persecution based on political grounds” in Benghazi, Libya’s second city.
Libya’s foreign ministry said it would be seeking Senussi’s return for trial in Tripoli.
Senussi first came to prominence in the 1970s when he developed his talent for brutally repressing opponents of Gadaffi.
He is notorious in Libya for his alleged role in giving the order for the massacre of 1,200 political inmates in Abu Salim prison in 1996.
When riots broke out among inmates seeking better food and sanitation, Senussi is believed to have ordered guards standing on the grated roofs of the cells to open fire, killing many of those trapped inside.
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The 63-year-old intelligence chief has been on the run since Gadaffi’s regime began to collapse last summer.
His capture marks the end of an era in Libyan history as he was the last leading fugitive after the fall of Gadaffi.
There will be huge pressure on the Mauritanian government to hand over Senussi, either to the Hague or to Tripoli where the new leadership wants to put him on trail.
However, Mauritania is not a signatory to the Rome statute that established the ICC and is therefore not obliged under international law to hand him over to the court.
American embassy telegrams leaked in 2010 described Senussi as a confidant of Gadaffi who made “many of his medical arrangements”. During the civil war he was blamed for organising killings in Benghazi and recruiting foreign mercenaries.
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The ICC said Senussi, “once instructed by Gadaffi to implement the plan of deterring and quelling civilian demonstrations against the regime in Benghazi, directly instructed the troops to attack civilians demonstrating in the city”.
It added that he was “in a position to trigger the actions of the armed forces and ensure compliance with such orders, and therefore, the commission of crimes”.