Gaddafi's brother-in-law and intelligence chief reportedly played key role in attempt to crush rebels, but is more than a henchman
Abdullah Senussi, Muammar Gaddafi's brother-in-law and intelligence chief, must have been an easy choice for the prosecutor of the international criminal court: his close association with the worst excesses of the Libyan regime goes back many years, and he reportedly played a key role in attempting to crush the Benghazi uprising when it began, in February.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, described Senussi as Gaddafi's "righthand man, the executioner". But Senussi was more than a hard man in one of the most repressive regimes in the post-cold war world: his brief extended to political and PR strategies after Gaddafi abandoned terrorism and his WMD programmes in 2003 and sought a complete makeover.
Senussi's current whereabouts are unknown, but in mid-March, a month into the uprising, officials in Tripoli still spoke of him with respect and fear. Rumours that he had been arrested could not be confirmed. The ICC described him as "personal adviser to Gaddafi on security services, policy and military matters", saying its evidence was that he is still active as head of military intelligence. Whatever his position, he is one of the Libyan leader's ahl al-Khaimah (people of the tent) – Gaddafi's very closest entourage.
Senussi, 62, was blamed for the killings in Benghazi as well as for the recruitment of foreign mercenaries. Later reports from the rebel capital described how he had been sent there to "keep a lid on the situation". Senussi first appealed for an end to protests but made clear that if they persisted there would be a violent response. Bloody repression followed and the uprising spread to Tobruk and al-Bayda.
Libyans hold him responsible for the notorious 1996 massacre of about 1,200 inmates at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison. The ICC said he was also behind the killing of 13 demonstrators in Benghazi in 2006.
Until now, Senussi's most notorious exploit was as mastermind of the bombing of a French airliner over Niger in 1989 in which 170 people were killed. That led to a 1999 case in which he was convicted in absentia in France. He has been unable to travel abroad freely since then.
In the 1980s, he headed Libya's external security organisation, in which capacity he was said to have recruited Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people were killed. Like Megrahi, Senussi is a member of the powerful Megarha tribe. He is also a cousin of Abdel-Salam Jalloud, one of Gaddafi's oldest comrades.
"Senussi had a tendency to rant," said a diplomat who dealt with him. "You could never be entirely sure he was fully rational. He could suddenly let fly with revolutionary or anti-western rhetoric, and you would wonder whether you could actually negotiate with him. I could well believe he has had a hand in every horrible thing the Libyans have ever done."
US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks described him as a confidant of the leader who makes "many of his [Gaddafi's] medical arrangements". Like other senior Libyan figures, Senussi has extensive private business interests. Libyan, Arab and western sources describe Senussi as a thuggish figure who would personally beat and abuse prisoners.
In 2006, Senussi was involved in targeting influential western academics with the aim of improving Gaddafi's image and highlighting the emergence of "the new Libya". He was also said to have been behind an alleged Libyan intelligence plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2003.