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The International Criminal Court:”Gaddafi planned to kill people”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has said that Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi’s regime had planned to kill civilians even before protests started.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo said on Tuesday that following the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, Gaddafi’s regime had decided about ways to suppress demonstrations, adding that the ICC had “evidence that the shooting of civilians was a pre-determined plan.

The planning at the beginning was to use tear gas and if that failed to work, shooting,” Reuters quoted the ICC prosecutor as saying.

The UN Security Council (UNSC) referred Libya to the court on February 26 and the legal body has put Gaddafi, his son and his cronies under probe for clamping down on opposition forces and civilians.

The prosecutor said defecting from Gaddafi’s regime could be considered as a mitigating circumstance, but stated political decisions will be taken by the UNSC.

This is while Gaddafi has stepped up diplomatic efforts by dispatching his deputy foreign minister to Greece and several other European countries, revealing a plan for ceding power to one of his sons.

The plan has spawned severe reactions from the revolutionary forces with former Libyan ambassador to the United States Ali Aujali describing it as “a ridiculous offer.”

Despite continuing US-led airstrikes, Abdul Ilah Khatib, the UN special envoy to Libya, has said that coming up with a solution to the crisis in Libya may take a long time, emphasizing that Libyan people themselves must determine their fate.

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