Gaddafi Sons, Ex-Regime Officials to Face Trial in Libya

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his younger brother, Saadi, are due to face court on Monday on charges including murder and plundering state coffers. Their co-accused include the former intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi and former prime ministers, al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi and Bouzid Dorda.

For prosecutors, it is a chance to finally call to account key members of the Gaddafi regime for alleged crimes committed during the uprising and the decades of dictatorship that preceded it, Al Jazeera reported.

Security is expected to be tight at Tripoli's Hadba prison, which has been turned into a fortress protected by barbed wire, armoured cars and machine-guns. Prosecutors say more than 200 witnesses have been interviewed and more than 40,000 pages of evidence assembled, along with video and audio evidence that allegedly shows the defendants giving instructions to security units to open fire on protesters.

For many Libyans, the Gaddafi brothers and Senussi symbolise the different faces of the former regime.

Arrested in November 2011, Saif, 41, has been held prisoner by militia leaders in the mountain town of Zintan, about 150km southwest of the capital. The militia persistently refused to hand him over to the central authorities, so he is expected to participate in the trial via video link.

Saif was considered the man most likely to replace his father, who was captured and killed at the end of the 2011 uprising during fighting in his hometown of Sirte. Saif earned a playboy reputation abroad, throwing lavish parties and being entertained by the British royal family at Buckingham Palace. He was controversially awarded a doctorate by the London School of Economics, after the charity he controlled gave the school a £1.5m ($2.5m) grant. Saif was captured by Zintan militias as he fled though the southern desert in November 2011, missing two fingers, allegedly the result of wounds from a NATO air strike.

Saadi, 40, was equally flamboyant, achieving prominence by being signed as a player by three Italian Serie A football clubs (Perugia, Udinese and Sampdoria), though he made just two substitute appearances in a three-year career.

Senussi, meanwhile, was viewed as Gaddafi's chief enforcer, running his intelligence network for several decades. He has already been convicted in absentia by a Paris court for the bombing of a French airliner that crashed in Niger in 1989.