Zawiyah:
Five defendants appeared in the dock in the Libyan city of Zawiyah on Tuesday in what court officials said was the first civil trial of suspected supporters of slain dictator Moamer Gaddafi.
Judge Amer al-Turki did not read out any charge sheet before adjourning the trial for a week at the request of defence lawyers.
But court official Ali al-Shaab Mohammed said that the five were accused of "forming a criminal gang with the aim of carrying out acts of sabotage and of possessing unlicensed weapons."
They were all detained in Zawiyah, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Tripoli, during the uprising that overthrew Gaddafi last year.
Two lawyers appeared for the defence in the brand new courtroom, one of them a woman wearing the full niqab veil.
In early February, a first group of alleged Gaddafi supporters went on trial before a military court in Libya's second-largest city Benghazi, but Mohammed said that the Zawiyah hearing was the first before a civil court.
The Benghazi court later ruled itself incompetent to hear a case against civilian defendants and referred it to a civil court.
Several former top officials of Kadhafi's regime and hundreds of his supporters, both soldiers and civilians, have been held for months, many of them in prisons run by former rebel militias that are outside government control.
The government said that it has in recent weeks taken control of several militia prisons and moved to get the courts back up and running.
Judge Amer al-Turki did not read out any charge sheet before adjourning the trial for a week at the request of defence lawyers.
But court official Ali al-Shaab Mohammed said that the five were accused of "forming a criminal gang with the aim of carrying out acts of sabotage and of possessing unlicensed weapons."
They were all detained in Zawiyah, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Tripoli, during the uprising that overthrew Gaddafi last year.
Two lawyers appeared for the defence in the brand new courtroom, one of them a woman wearing the full niqab veil.
In early February, a first group of alleged Gaddafi supporters went on trial before a military court in Libya's second-largest city Benghazi, but Mohammed said that the Zawiyah hearing was the first before a civil court.
The Benghazi court later ruled itself incompetent to hear a case against civilian defendants and referred it to a civil court.
Several former top officials of Kadhafi's regime and hundreds of his supporters, both soldiers and civilians, have been held for months, many of them in prisons run by former rebel militias that are outside government control.
The government said that it has in recent weeks taken control of several militia prisons and moved to get the courts back up and running.
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