TRIPOLI: Libya on Wednesday threatened key oil client Switzerland with reprisals over last week’s detention in Geneva of a son of Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi, as Bern said Tripoli has already taken retaliatory steps.

On the same day that a protest against the arrest was staged in the Libyan capital, the Swiss foreign ministry disclosed Libya has been retaliating since July 17, the day Hannibal was released on bail. Libya’s envoy in Switzerland has been recalled and the Libyan authorities suspended the issuing of visas to Swiss citizens, the ministry said.

Air links between Switzerland and Libya have been reduced, two Swiss nationals have been in police custody since Saturday and Swiss businesses in Libya have received closure orders, it added.

Libya has also shut the local offices of Swiss food group Nestle and engineering firm ABB and detained officials of both, reports said.

The Swiss ATS news agency said the sole representative of Nestle in Libya, an Egyptian national, was held for several hours, while ABB said the firm “confirms that a Swiss employee is currently being detained.” As the tension mounted and the Swiss government advised Swiss citizens not to travel to Libya, Bern tried to smooth out ties with Tripoli.

“A diplomatic delegation left Bern for Tripoli on Wednesday to give explanations to the Libyan authorities” on the arrest of Qadhafi’s son, said the foreign ministry.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey spoke to her Libyan counterpart Abderrahman Shalgan by telephone on Tuesday and stressed she wished to avoid the issue from escalating, the ministry said.

The threat of reprisals and a demand for an official apology came in a statement handed to the Swiss embassy during the protest by dozens of members of the revolutionary committees which form the backbone of Qadhafi’s regime.

The protesters massed outside the embassy charged in the statement that the arrest on July 15 in Geneva of Hannibal, 32, and his wife was an “odious crime” against the honour of the Libyan people.

They dismissed the couple’s two-day detention as a “dangerous precedent” and charged that Hannibal had been mistreated in prison.—AP