Geneva, December 20: The trial of one of the Swiss businessmen in Libya on charges of alleged illegal business activities has been postponed until January 2, the Swiss foreign ministry said Saturday.
Max Goeldi’s trial had been due to take place on Saturday but was postponed for an unknown reason, Swiss foreign ministry spokesman Erik Reumann told the Swiss news agency ATS.
Goeldi and Rashid Hamdani, who were due to go on trial this weekend according to their lawyer, have already been sentenced to 16-month jail terms for overstaying visas and are at the centre of a diplomatic row between Bern and Tripoli.
Goeldi, a senior manager at the Swedish-Swiss engineering giant ABB, and Hamdani, who works for a small construction firm, have spent the past few months holed up at the Swiss embassy in Tripoli, as the standoff intensified.
Reumann had no information on Hamdani’s trial, due Sunday.
The two were detained in Libya after Gathafi’s son and daughter-in-law were briefly arrested in July 2008 when two servants complained he had mistreated them in a Geneva hotel.
The servants later dropped the allegations, but Goldi and Hamdani were not freed.
Tripoli initially denied the men exit visas and charged them with immigration offences.
Last week, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for their release, describing Tripoli’s treatment of them as “unfair.”
—Agencies