The Libyan rebels on Tuesday presented an ultimatum to Sirte, the home city of Muammar Gaddafi which is bound to fall in a matter of days. The "hunt for Gaddafi" may be over by tomorrow. He may be dead, but if he is still alive and has not yet fled the country, he will be found and tried.
Developments can take any turn in Libya. The opposition leaders have announced that Gaddafi, his sons and daughters have been destroyed (or that they have fled the country) so often that these days it is hard to take their "thousand and one tales" seriously.
Limited escape options
Gaddafi's fate is not enviable under any scenario. One of the legal consequences of globalization is that dictators these days have nowhere to hide.
Where can the Libyan dictator potentially go for a peaceful old age? Out of the 193 UN member countries, he will never be accepted by those who signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (operational since 2002, 114 of the 139 signatory countries have ratified it). Others will never let the colonel in even though they do not recognize the ICC jurisdiction (the United States, India, Russia, China, Israel and several other countries). Excluding the unfriendly Arab oil monarchies, this leaves only a handful of countries.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi for crimes against humanity in June 2011.
Who will accept Gaddafi?
The days are long gone when exiled dictators could shelter in France, as Haiti's former dictator, 'Baby Doc' Jean-Claude Duvalier, did in the 1980s. Japan, where Peru's ex-President Alberto Fujimori spent his retirement from 2000 to 2007, is also out of the question. And besides, neither of these two individuals committed as many crimes as the Libyan colonel.
Saudi Arabia, one of his closest neighbors, could accept him, because helping fellow believers has been its official policy. It granted temporary residence permits to two Arab Spring "victims": Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, ousted in January, and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In the 1980s, it gave shelter to Idi Amin Dada, the eccentric, mentally unstable and highly unpredictable Ugandan leader. Idi Amin first fled to Libya, but soon fell out with the volatile colonel and moved to Saudi Arabia.
However, Gaddafi - if he is still alive - is unlikely to be allowed to live in Riyadh or its environs after publicly calling King Abdullah a puppet of Britain and the United States in 2009.
South Africa, with which many former dictators, including Gaddafi, used to have good relations, is no longer a suitable safe-haven because it has now signed the Rome Statute and can do without the hassle inevitably involved. Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant in 2009, avoids even touching down in South Africa on long-haul flights.
In March, Haiti's ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned home from South Africa where he had lived in exile since 2004.
Furthermore, Johannesburg values its new status as a member of the economic and political group BRICS, which also comprises Brazil, Russia, India and China, far too much to endanger it by violating its international commitments.
No way out
There is a slight possibility that Gaddafi will flee to his friends Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or even Kim Jong-il in North Korea. But Venezuela is a Rome Statute signatory and, like Pyongyang, is located too far away for the colonel to get there undetected. The West's Special Forces are, after all, on his trail.
Gaddafi is by far not the first victim of the Arab revolts that took hold late last year. Life has become difficult for the Tunisian and Yemeni presidents, and the Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak, is facing a long prison term or, worse still, capital punishment. The Tunisian president and his wife were sentenced in absentia to more than 50 years in two separate trials.
Problems for the dictators of the Middle East and beyond began long before the ICC was established. The first to fall was Iran's Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in February 1979. He fled to Morocco and then on to the Bahamas and Mexico. After visiting the United States in November 1979 for medical treatment, Islamic radicals seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. He spent some time in Panama before ultimately settling in Egypt, where he died in July 1980.
Algerian officials have confirmed that the Gaddafi clan is indeed leaving Libya. Gaddafi's wife Safiya, daughter Aisha and sons Hannibal and Mohammed and their children entered Algeria on Monday morning. Algeria's Foreign Ministry has duly notified the UN Secretary General and Security Council. However, they add the caveat that the Gaddafis will move on to some other country, which makes sense: the last thing Algeria wants is to quarrel with the new, heavily armed and angry, Libyan authorities.
It is unclear where Gaddafi's other daughter and four sons are, or whether they are still alive. But we will surely know soon.
The views expressed in this article are the author's and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
