Swiss businessman Max Goeldi will leave Libya on Sunday for home, three days after being freed from a Libyan jail for visa offences, Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey told reporters.
“Goeldi will leave Libya today,” Calmy-Rey told reporters after a meeting with Libyan officials.
She also said that Libya and Switzerland have signed an “action plan” to solve a bitter diplomatic row that saw Goeldi stuck in the North African nation since the spat broke out in July 2008.
Spain, which holds the current presidency of the European Union, also signed the agreement, said Calmy-Rey who arrived late on Saturday in Libya with her Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos aiming to secure Goeldi’s release.
Germany, which has been trying to mediate between Bern and Tripoli, also signed the accord, the Swiss foreign minister said.
A Libyan official said earlier that Calmy-Rey and Moratinos had met Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa on Sunday and that an accord was due to be signed after the meeting.
The Spanish foreign ministry said on Saturday that Moratinos and Calmy-Rey would be discussing the return home of Goeldi, who was freed on Thursday after four months in a Libyan prison.
Goeldi’s lawyer told AFP on Sunday that he was at the passport office waiting to pick up his client’s exit visa. On Saturday he had said Goeldi had received his passport and could leave Libya the following day.
The businessman has been at the centre of a diplomatic spat sparked off by the brief arrest in Geneva in July 2008 of a son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
Goeldi was detained after Hannibal Kadhafi and his pregnant wife were held by police when two of their domestic staff charged they had been mistreated by the couple at a Geneva hotel.
