TRIPOLI (Reuters) ? A day after Muammar Gaddafi's son was captured by Libyan fighters, the ousted leader's intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi was said to be surrounded nearby at a remote desert homestead and negotiating his surrender.
The arrest of the other survivor of the old regime who is wanted at The Hague for crimes against humanity would crown a momentous couple of days for a new government that is still in the process of formation, and also pose immediate tests of its authority - both over the militias and with the world powers.
A commander of former rebel forces nominally loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC), General Ahmed al-Hamdouni, told Reuters that his men, acting on a tip, had found and surrounded Senussi at a house belonging to his sister near the town of Birak, about 500 km (300 miles) south of Tripoli and in the same general area as Saif al-Islam was seized on Saturday.
An NTC spokesman, Abdul Hafez Ghoga, and Free Libya television said Senussi, who is Saif al-Islam's uncle by marriage, had been captured, although information was sketchy.
But Hamdouni, commander of forces for the vast Fezzan province that comprises Libya's Saharan south, said negotiations were continuing near Birak.
Like Muammar Gaddafi, who was captured and killed on the coast a month ago on Sunday, Saif al-Islam and Senussi were indicted this year by the International Criminal Court for alleged plans to kill protesters following the Arab Spring revolt that broke out in February. But NTC officials have said they can convince the ICC to let them try both men in Libya.
Ghoga said NTC members meeting on Sunday had confirmed that preference, as did the current justice minister - although legal experts point out that international law demands Tripoli make a strong case for the right to try anyone who has already been indicted by the ICC. Given the state of Libya's legal system after 42 years of dictatorship, as well as the depth of feelings after this year's civil war, the ICC may not agree.
Its chief prosecutor is expected in Libya this week.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi spent Sunday secreted in the militia stronghold of Zintan while in Tripoli the Libyan rebel leaders who overthrew his father tried to resolve their differences and form a government that can try the new captive.
With rival local militia commanders from across the country trying to parlay their guns into cabinet seats, officials in the capital gave mixed signals on how long the prime minister-designate, Abdurrahim El-Keib, may need to form his full team.
Ghoga said the NTC had given Keib another two days, right up to a deadline of Tuesday, to agree his cabinet - a delay that indicated the extent of horse-trading going on.
And though the Zintan mountain fighters who intercepted the 39-year-old heir to the four-decade Gaddafi dynasty deep in the Sahara said they would hand him over once some central authority was clear, few expect Saif al-Islam in Tripoli soon.
Members of the NTC, the self-appointed legislative panel of notables formed after February's uprising, expect to vote on Keib's nominees, with keenest attention among the men who control the militias focused on the Defence Ministry.
One official working for the NTC said that the group from Zintan, a town of just 50,000 in the Western Mountains outside Tripoli that was a stronghold of resistance to Gaddafi, might even secure that ministry thanks to holding Saif al-Islam.
Other groups include rival Islamist and secularist militias in the capital, those from Benghazi, Libya's second city and the original seat of revolt, and the fighters from the third city of Misrata, who took credit for capturing and killing the elder Gaddafi and haggled with the NTC over the fate of his rotting corpse for several days in October.
"FINAL ACT"
"The final act of the Libyan drama", as a spokesman for the former rebels put it, began in the blackness of the Sahara night, when a small unit of fighters from the town of Zintan, acting on a tip-off, intercepted Saif al-Islam and four armed companions driving in a pair of 4x4 vehicles on a desert track.
It ended, after a 300-mile flight north on a cargo plane, with the London-educated younger Gaddafi held in a safe house in Zintan and the townsfolk vowing to keep him safe until he can face a judge in the capital.
His captors said he was "very scared" when they first recognised him, despite the heavy beard and enveloping Tuareg robes and turban he wore. But they reassured him and, by the time a Reuters correspondent spoke to him aboard the plane, he had been chatting amiably to his guards.
"He looked tired. He had been lost in the desert for many days," said Abdul al-Salaam al-Wahissi, a Zintan fighter involved in the operation. "I think he lost his guide."
Western leaders, who backed February's uprising against Gaddafi but looked on squeamishly as rebel fighters filmed themselves taking vengeance on the fallen strongman a month ago, urged Keib to seek foreign help to ensure a fair trial.
Keib, who taught engineering at U.S. universities before returning to Libya to join the rebellion, drove on Saturday the two hours from Tripoli to Zintan to pay homage to its fighters. He promised justice would be done but Saif al-Islam would not be handed over to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which had indicted him for crimes against humanity.
DEATH PENALTY
The justice minister from the outgoing executive said the younger Gaddafi was likely to face the death penalty, though the charge sheet, expected to include ordering killings as well as looting the public purse, would be drawn up by the state prosecutor after due investigation.
Western leaders urged Libya to work with the ICC which has also issued an arrest warrant for Saif al-Islam, on charges of crimes against humanity during the crackdown.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both called on Libya to hand him over to the ICC and guarantee his safety.
Keib said Libya would make sure Gaddafi's son faced a fair trial and called his capture the "crowning" of the uprising.
"We assure Libyans and the world that Saif al-Islam will receive a fair trial ... under fair legal processes which our own people had been deprived of for the last 40 years," Keib told a news conference in Zintan on Saturday.
Zintani fighters said they believed one of Saif al-Islam's companions was a nephew or other relative of Senussi, who is married to a sister of Gaddafi's wife, Saif al-Islam's mother.
(Additional reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Hisham El-Dani and Francois Murphy in Tripoli and Oliver Holmes and Taha Zargoun in Zintan; Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
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