Libya's former prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, (Photo: Reuters).
Tunisia will extradite former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, held since his arrest last September, home to Libya, the justice ministry said Tuesday.
"The extradition decision has been taken," a ministry official told AFP. "There are only the procedures to complete with the Libyan authorities."
A spokesman of the dominant Ennahda party, Nejib Gharbi, said for his part that Tunis and Tripoli were consulting on a date and modalities.
A lawyer for Mahmoudi, who launched a protest hunger strike last Saturday after the Tunisian prime minister indicated he was in favour of extradition, slammed the decision.
"It is a disgrace for human rights in Tunisia and for the Tunisian revolution," Mabrouk Kourchid told AFP.
Mahmoudi is the subject of two extradition requests from Tripoli.
But former Tunisian interim president Fouad Mebazaa did not sign an extradition decree, and his successor Moncef Marzouki has said he would not authorise extradition until he was assured of a fair trial in Libya.
Mahmoudi's lawyers and human rights groups say he will be executed if he returns to Libya, where a February 2011 uprising put an end to more than four decades of Moamer Kadhafi's dictatorship.
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