Marzouki pressured to release Baghdadi

Some Tunisian lawyers Thursday on reiterated their call for president Moncef Marzouki not to hand over Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, the last Libyan prime minister during Muammar Gaddafi's era, to the Libyan authorities. Arabstoday, interviewed Mohammed Bakkar, one of Mahmoudi's lawyers, on the sidelines of a press conference held by Mahmoudi's defence team in Tunis. Bakker said: "Mahmoudi is acquitted by the Tunisian judiciary, so keeping him in jail has no meaning, except to say that the whole prosecution is based on political motives. The message, we can understand from the Tunisian authorities' stance towards this case, is that the Tunisian judiciary is subject to political issues, and the latter is subject to a foreign power that doesn't respect our internal sovereignty." "President Marzouki has to commit to the decree of his predecessor, Fouad Mebazaa, who refused to hand over Mahmoudi to the Libyan authorities. Marzouki also has to release Mahmoudi, as his arrest warrant expired months ago, and the Central African Republic has granted him political asylum," added Bakkar. Marzouki, on Thursday told the AKI news agency that Tunisia was committed to handing over Mahmoudi to the Libyan authorities, but only after elections take place in Libya, the security situation settles down, and the Libyans offer all the necessary guarantees that Mahmoudi will not be tortured, or sentenced to death. In similar developments, the head of Mahmoudi's defence team, Bashir al-Said, insisted that reports about Gaddafi's regime funding the electoral campaign of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 are "beyond doubt". Al-Said said that Mahmoudi told him directly that he was ordered by Gaddafi to transfer 50 million Euros to Sarkozy's campaign through the African Portfolio for Investment, which was owned by the Libyan government. Mahmoudi's son in law, Mahmoud Boushala, last Saturday denied his father-in-law had ever talked to al-Said, or any other person about such information. Mahmoudi was arrested in Tunisia on April 22, 2011, on his way to Algeria. He was charged for entering Tunisia illegally, and then jailed in the Mernakiya prison, west of Tunis.