THE HAGUE/TRIPOLI: A war crimes prosecutor Monday sought an arrest warrant for Moammar Gadhafi, accusing him of killing protesters against his four-decade rule, as NATO stepped up strikes on Libyan forces.
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo also asked judges, who must now see whether there is enough evidence to issue warrants, for the arrest of Gadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam and his spy chief brother-in-law Abdullah al-Senussi.

“We have strong evidence, so strong evidence,” Moreno-Ocampo said, adding: “We are almost ready for trial. Gadhafi ruled Libya through fear and Libyans are losing that fear now.”
The prosecutor’s office had received calls from senior officials in the Gadhafi government in the past week to provide information. Prosecutors spoke with eyewitnesses to attacks and assessed evidence from 1,200 documents, plus videos and photos.

The ICC prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant for Gadhafi is a step toward justice for the victims of human rights violations in Libya, Amnesty International said Monday.
“The request for arrest warrants is a step forward for international justice and accountability in the region,” said Michael Bochenek, Amnesty International’s director of Law and Policy. “However, the international community that came together in such unprecedented agreement to refer Libya to the International Criminal Court cannot allow justice to appear selective. By any standard, what is happening in Syria is just as bad as the situation was in Libya when the Security Council referred that country to the ICC.”

NATO, which has been hitting targets in Libya for nearly two months, appeared to step up its bombing campaign Monday with strikes in several towns and cities including Tripoli, according to Libya state television and rebels.
On the diplomatic front, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the U.N. was working on the removal of Gadhafi to exile to make way for a new government and a Libyan government delegation was expected in Moscow Tuesday.
Moreno-Ocampo said persecution was still taking place in areas under Gadhafi control with forces arresting, imprisoning and torturing alleged dissidents. Some had disappeared.
Prosecutors are also investigating reports of mass rapes, war crimes committed by different parties and attacks against sub-Saharan Africans wrongly seen as mercenaries once the Libyan situation developed into an armed conflict.

Libyan officials have already denounced his move, saying the court is a creation of the West for prosecuting African leaders.
Rebel council head Mustafa Abdel-Jalil welcomed the move against the three men. “It is a decision that conforms to reality. Moammar Gadhafi is the supreme leader of armed forces. The battle is being managed by him. All this death and destruction is done by his orders,” he told al-Arabiya television.

Libya is not a member of the ICC but Moreno-Ocampo said Libyan authorities had primary responsibility to make arrests and that arrests are the best way to protect civilians.
Three months after a revolt began, fighting between rebels and government forces on several fronts has come to a near-standstill with Gadhafi refusing to relinquish power.
The rebels, however, appeared to have secured vital supplies Monday according to ship tracking data, which showed they expected a delivery of gasoil from Amsterdam. It would be the second known fuel shipment to reach eastern Libya from the West.

Frattini, asked about the possibility of arranging exile for Gadhafi, said: “If we talk about it now, we’ll burn this possibility.”
“We’re obviously working with the U.N. on finding exactly this way out,” he told Canale 5 television Monday.
“A political way out that would remove the dictator and his family from the scene and allow the immediate creation of a government of national reconciliation,” he said.
Russia said Gadhafi envoys were expected in Moscow Tuesday and that it hoped to host rebel representatives soon.

State-run television in Libya reported there were NATO strikes on Tripoli, the town of Zawiyah about 50 kilometers west of the capital, the western Tripoli suburb of Tajoura, and on the town of Zuara, 120 kilometers west of Tripoli.
In each case strikes hit military and civilian targets and caused “material and human losses,” it said.
The channel reported more strikes late Monday in the Libyan capital and a Reuters reporter said he heard blasts.
A rebel spokesman in the town of Zintan, in the Western mountains region south-west of Tripoli, told Reuters by telephone that NATO had been hitting government weapons depots about 30 kilometers from the town.
“The strikes started at 2 a.m. and are still going on. They are sporadic. I’m hearing loud explosions,” said the spokesman, called Abdulrahman.

After a series of airstrikes on his Tripoli compound, Gadhafi taunted NATO, saying in an audio recording he was in a place where it could not reach him.
NATO said its warships found explosives and mannequins on a small boat off the Libyan port of Misrata Monday, in what they believe was a plan by Gadhafi’s forces to lure ships and destroy them.
NATO is also broadcasting its own message to Gadhafi forces on Libyan army radio frequencies, telling them foreign mercenaries are raping the Libyan people.

“Nobody has the right to make the lives of their people a living hell,” says the broadcast, heard by Reuters on a Libyan army radio taken by rebels in the Western Mountains.
“Stop fighting against your own people,” it continues, saying that the Libyan leadership has lost control and recruited non-Libyan mercenaries “and allowed them to rape your people.”