NEWSMAKER-Gaddafi son may prefer surrender to death, after all - Reuters Africa

By David Stamp

Oct 26 (Reuters) - Saif al-Islam Gaddafi once vowed to fight and die on Libyan soil, but now he may be ready to hand himself in to the International Criminal Court rather than suffer his father's gruesome fate.

An official of the National Transitional Council said on Wednesday that Saif al-Islam, the only one of Muammar Gaddafi's eight children still on the run, had proposed surrendering to the Hague-based ICC, where he is wanted on war crimes charges.

Any surrender would mark another U-turn by Saif al-Islam, an internationally well-connected philanthropist and liberal reformer who turned abruptly into a soldier ready to die rather than capitulate when rebels rose up against his father.

"We fight here in Libya; we die here in Libya," he told Reuters Television in an interview shortly after the rebellion broke out in February.

Three of Gaddafi's sons did die on home soil, along with their father, whose battered and abused body went on public show in a meat store before its burial on Tuesday.

But Saif al-Islam, whose name means "Sword of Islam", wants to put his fate in the hands of the ICC, along with Gaddafi's former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who is also wanted by the court, the NTC official said.

Educated at the London School of Economics, Saif al-Islam was once seen by many governments as the acceptable, Western-friendly face of Libya, and heir apparent to his father. But when the rebellion broke out, he immediately chose family and clan loyalties over his many friendships in the West.

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