Libya Saif al-Islam is seized

A month after Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed, his son Saif al-Islam was seized without a fight by Libyan militiamen who are now holding him in their mountain stronghold until Tripoli has a government to try him.

"The final of act of the Libyan drama", as a spokesman for the former rebels put it, began in the blackness of the Sahara night, when a small unit of fighters from the town of Zintan, acting on a tip-off, intercepted Gaddafi and four armed companions driving in a pair of 4x4 vehicles on a desert track.

It ended, after a 300-mile flight north on a cargo plane, with the London-educated, 39-year-old heir-apparent to four decades of dictatorship held in a safe house in Zintan and the townsfolk vowing to see no harm to him until he can face a judge, and maybe in due course, an executioner in the capital.