Qadhafi's former premier jailed after fleeing Libya

Libya's neighbour Tunisia jailed Muammar Qadhafi's former prime minister on Thursday, and Libya's new rulers said they were tightening their grip on the desert towns where Qadhafi himself may be hiding. In the highest profile detention of a Qadhafi associate to date, a Tunisian court sentenced ex-prime minister Al Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi to six months in jail on charges of illegally entering the country on Wednesday evening.
"Al-Mahmoudi was arrested yesterday evening," a Tunisian Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "(He) was arrested because he entered Tunisian territory illegally He did not have an entry stamp in his passport." The justice minister in Libya's new government said Tripoli would request that the former prime minister be extradited to stand trial in Libya.
"Baghdadi directly oversaw the operations which had to do with the killings of Libyans," the minister, Mohammed al-Alagi, said on Al Arabiya television station. The National Transitional Council (NTC), Libya's de facto government since Qadhafi was swept from the capital last month, has been anxious to show that it can establish firm control over a country riven by tribal and regional rivalries.
The new government said it was consolidating its grip on Sabha and other oasis towns in the far south of the country which had sided with Qadhafi. "Our revolutionaries are controlling 100 percent of Sabha city, although there are some pockets of resistance by snipers," NTC military spokesman Ahmed Bani told reporters in the capital, Tripoli.
Until now some parts of Sabha, the traditional base for Qadhafi's own tribe about 800 km (500 miles) south of Tripoli, had been occupied by fighters loyal to him. The council says its forces have now also taken control of Jufra, to the north-east of Sabha, and the nearby oasis towns of Sokna, Waddan, and Houn. The NTC official said the manhunt for Qadhafi, in hiding for weeks though he occasionally issues defiant audio messages, was drawing closer to its target.
"There is no whole tribe or city on Qadhafi's side," said Bani. "I'm asking everyone in the south who has any news about the tyrant or his loyalists ... to notify the legal bodies about them." "We are doing our best looking for the tyrant. There is some news here and there that he ran away from Sabha to another place but it cannot be confirmed."
In Tripoli on Thursday, the US ambassador returned to work after a hiatus caused by the civil war, and predicted a quick end to the fighting. "I think it is a matter of time (for) Qadhafi and his remaining loyalists. Their resistance is finished," Ambassador Gene Cretz told reporters at a ceremony to mark the re-opening of the US mission.
Libya's interim government received a diplomatic boost when its neighbour Algeria recognised the NTC as the country's legitimate representative, according to a report broadcast by Al Arabiya. Algeria was the last of Libya's neighbours to grant recognition, and the two sides have for months been trading allegations.
Western security officials say good relations between Libya and Algeria are vital if they are to keep a lid on al Qaeda's north African branch, which has kidnapped foreigners and attacked Western targets in the region. The country's new rulers were faring less well on the battlefield, aside from advances in the far south. On the Western outskirts of Sirte on Thursday there was little fighting, and dozens of civilians poured out of the city through anti-Qadhafi checkpoints. Over on the eastern side of the city, NTC forces came under heavy artillery fire.