On Sunday, the United Kingdom removed former Libyan Prime Minister, Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi, who served under the regime of Muammar Gaddafi from its sanctions list, according to a financial notice released by the UK government.
The UK Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation stated in its notice that Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi “has been removed from the consolidated list, and is no longer subject to an asset freeze.”
Al-Mahmoudi was originally sanctioned by the European Union in March 2011 for his position, and alleged role in the repression of demonstrators, as per the Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 272/2011.
He was arrested in the Tozeur region of southern Tunisia in September 2011. He began a hunger strike in his prison in Tunisia, after the decision to extradite him to Tripoli was announced.
The extradition, which took place during the Tunisia’s Troika, sparked protests by various political and human rights parties. They questioned the possibility of Al-Mahmoudi receiving a fair trial in Libya.
The Troika was an unofficial name for the alliance between the three parties; the Ennahda, the secular Congress for the Republic (CPR), and the Ettakatol parties, which ruled in Tunisia after the 2011 Constituent Assembly election.
Al-Baghdadi was sentenced to death in 2015, but was later acquitted by a Libyan court of the charges against him. Al-Mahmoudi’s lawyer claimed that neither he nor his client’s family had been given any warning of the extradition.
The former Libyan Premier was re-listed under the EU’s single Libya sanctions regulation in January 2016, and his designation was carried over to the UK sanctions regime after Brexit.
Al-Mahmoudi was de-listed by the EU and Switzerland in November 2021.
