Libyan protesters target Swiss banks over Gaddafi's son's arrest

Opec member Libya should withdraw deposits in Swiss banks if the Swiss government fails to apologise for the arrest of a son of Muammar al-Gaddafi, an influential Libyan political group said yesterday.

The Revolutionary Committees Movement, a group of Gaddafi followers who help to manage the Libyan leader's Jamahiriyah or state of the masses political system, made the call in protest at the arrest last week in Geneva of Hannibal Gaddafi.

"We are loyal to the revolution... We are ready to defend the leader and his family," shouted a crowd of more than 200 demonstrators who staged a protest organised by the committees outside the Swiss embassy in the capital Tripoli.

Mr Gaddafi, who has also been referred to as Motassim Bilal, was released on bail after he and his wife were charged with ill-treatment of two domestic employees. Mr Gaddafi denied the charges, his lawyer has said.

Mr Gaddafi was arrested in a luxury hotel in Geneva on July 15 after staff alerted police to repeated arguments in their suite. He spent two nights in jail while his wife Aline, who is nine months pregnant, was taken to hospital feeling unwell.

In Bern, the Swiss foreign ministry said it had sent a delegation to the north African oil-exporting country with information about the arrest of Hannibal Gaddafi "to prevent a crisis between the two countries."

"Since July 17, the Libyan authorities have taken a number of worrying retaliatory measures," it said, adding that until further notice it advised Swiss citizens not to travel to Libya.

In Geneva, Laurent Moutinot, the head of the Geneva canton government, denied Libyan accusations that Mr Gaddafi had been mistreated.

"The Geneva police did its work well, and did nothing that could give rise to criticism... No force was used against the Gaddafi couple," he said in a statement.

"The reputation of Switzerland as a country of human rights demanded that the police intervene."

In Tripoli, the committees movement said in a statement it would recommend to policy-makers that if an apology was not forthcoming for what it suggested were trumped-up charges, Libya should cut diplomatic ties with Switzerland.