What next for Saif Gaddafi, Libya and the ICC?

On Monday 21st January a deadline that it now appears was not only arbitrary but also purely notional elapsed. This was the deadline for the current Libyan government to tell the International Criminal Court what they were going to do with the two remaining indictees of the ‘Tripoli Three’ – Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah al-Senussi. This has spurred a discussion over whether they should be tried at The Hague or in Libya. The mainstream debate has been marked by a remarkable rigidity of thinking, with only two points that seem to be absolutely clear: one, that Libya has a legal obligation to hand them over to the ICC and two, that this is almost certainly not going to happen. This has led to remarkably pessimistic conclusions about the future of the ICC, Libya and the international rule of law framework.