Libyan former Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi was arrested on Wednesday night near Tamaghza on the south-western border with Algeria, in the company of two other people who were not identified. He was Prime Minister until the last days of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

Swiftly tried by the court at Tozeur, he was sentenced to six months in prison for illegal entry into Tunisia.

The appeal hearing will take place on Tuesday, also in Tozeur. While waiting, Mahmudi has been transferred from prison at Gafsa in the south to the Mornaguia jail, 14 kilometres (nine miles) southeast of Tunis, for security reasons, a source in the ministry of justice said.

Mahmudi's arrest was the second in Tunisia of a senior Libyan official since the fall of the regime run by Colonel Gaddafi, who has been on the run since Libyan rebels took the capital Tripoli on August 23.

On September 7, Major Khuildi Hamidi, one of Gaddafi’s fellow travellers, was arrested at the Tunis-Carthage international airport while he was preparing to board a flight for Casablanca, in Morocco.

Hamidi, who participated in the Libyan coup d'etat of 1969 and long headed the military intelligence services in his country, was also tried for illegal entry into Tunisia, but was acquitted. The acquittal was upheld on appeal last Thursday.