LONDON // Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister who has fled to Britain seeking political asylum, could face prosecution in either international or UK courts, Foreign Secretary William Hague said yesterday.
Welcoming the defection as a sign that the regime of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was "fragmented, under pressure and crumbling from within", Mr Hague said that Mr Koussa was "not being offered any immunity from British or international justice".
While the defection of such a close Qaddafi aide is seen in Washington and London as a boost to rebel morale and giving added legitimacy to the air campaign over Libya, few believe that it will prove a fatal blow to the Tripoli regime.
Mr Koussa, who flew by private jet into Farnborough Airport just outside London late on Wednesday after spending several days in Tunisia, is expected to be interviewed by Scottish police in the coming days over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing when 270 people were killed aboard Pan Am Flight 103. Scotland's Crown Office said yesterday it was seeking to question Mr Koussa over the bombing, saying the investigation into the attack remains open.
For more than 20 years, Mr Koussa served as Col Qaddafi's intelligence chief and has been linked with both the Lockerbie attack, most of whose victims were Americans, and the explosion aboard a French DC-10, which killed all 170 passengers and crew over Niger.
Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the rebel council in Benghazi, demanded that Mr Koussa be sent back to Libya for trial.
He claimed that Mr Koussa had been among those responsible for the brutal repression of opponents of Col Qaddafi's rule at home and the assassinations of opposition figures in exile, as well as the Lockerbie bombing.
"We want to bring him to court. This guy has so much blood on his hands. There are documented killings, torturing. There's documentation of what Moussa Koussa has done," Mr Gheriani told journalists.
"We want him tried by Libyan people. I believe once we have our government 100 per cent in control in Libya, things are normalised, we want him tried here. I think international law gives us that right."
Mr Koussa, who has a master's degree in sociology from Michigan State University and who was expelled from Libya's diplomatic mission in London in 1980 for publicly calling for the killing of Libyan dissidents in the UK, had come to Britain "under his own free will", Mr Hague told reporters in London yesterday.
He added: "Moussa Koussa is one of the most senior members of the Qaddafi regime and has been my channel of communication to the regime in recent weeks and I have spoken to him several times on the telephone, most recently last Friday.
"His resignation shows that Qaddafi's regime, which has already seen some defections to the opposition, is fragmented, under pressure and crumbling from within.
"Qaddafi must be asking himself who will be the next to abandon him. We reiterate our call for Qaddafi to go."
Mr Hague said that Mr Koussa, who arrived in Britain with his son, was being debriefed at a secret location by British officials, including Richard Northern, the British ambassador to Libya who is currently in London.
Initially, spokesmen for the Qaddafi regime maintained that Mr Koussa had flown to Britain on a diplomatic mission. However, he had already made it clear to British officials in Tunisia that he wanted to come to the UK because he was "no longer willing" to represent the Libyan regime.
His defection follows those of the justice and interior ministers, leaving Col Qaddafi to rely ever more heavily on his four sons and other family members for support.
Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Qaddafi regime, tried to shrug off Mr Koussa's unexpected departure in the regime's first admission yesterday that the minister had defected. He said that the Tripoli government "does not depend on individuals".
Mr Ibrahim added: "This is a struggle for the whole nation. It's not dependent on individuals or officials regardless of their ranking. I'm not confirming anything ... silence is our weapon."
Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, described Mr Koussa's arrival as "a great day" for families of victims of the atrocity.
"Today those relatives who seek the truth about why their families were murdered should be rejoicing," Mr Swire said.
"Koussa was at the centre of Qaddafi's inner circle. This is a guy who knows everything. He could tell us everything the Qaddafi regime knows."
Mr Swire met Mr Koussa during a visit to Libya in 1998. "He was extremely frightening - more frightening than Qaddafi himself. He was clearly running things. If Libya was involved in Lockerbie, he can tell us how they carried out the atrocity and why."
MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of the House of Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism, told the BBC that the first priority must be to discover the wealth of military and diplomatic intelligence that Mr Koussa possesses.
But he added: "What advantage he gives to us and to the rebels must be balanced by what he has done in the past.
"The fact remains that if this man has carried out crimes or been involved in criminal activity, then he must be brought to justice."
Noman Benotman, a friend of Mr Koussa and senior analyst at a UK-based Muslim think-tank, told Reuters: "He wasn't happy at all. He doesn't support the government attacks on civilians. He's seeking refuge in Britain and hopes he will be treated well."
Although for many years one of the most militant members of Col Qaddafi's regime, Mr Koussa, whose age is estimated at anywhere between 59 and 64, has followed a more conciliatory line in the past decade.
He was regarded as a key player in persuading Col Qaddafi to abandon the development of weapons of mass destruction, while the assistance he gave to the CIA in tracking down Islamist terrorists after the September 11 attacks laid the groundwork for the accommodation the Qaddafi's regime reached with the West beginning in 2003.
This rapprochement led to the French authorities dropping demands that Mr Koussa be extradited to face questions over the Niger airline bombing.
