Cars basted away on their horns, people waved flags in the streets and out of windows and the noise from machine-gun fire was incessant.

The speed at which the news spread was amazing. The Arab News reporter and driver were in the offices of the WFP in downtown Benghazi talking to a member of staff who was monitoring the news on Libya Today, a local Arabic-language news website. Suddenly up came the announcement of the arrest by members of the brigade from Zintan in the Nafusa Mountains. We checked other Libyan websites. They were reporting the same story. Then, within what seemed less than a minute hundreds of cars in the street outside started blasting their horns. Guns were being fired all over the place.

The city went literally ballistic. The gunfire was deafening. Out in the streets, cars drove past with their occupants holding handguns out the windows and shooting into the air.

Given earlier reports of Seif’s arrest that turned out to be untrue, some Libyans at first refused to belief the news, even after it was reported that Justice Minister Mohamed Alagy had confirmed it. “I’ll believe it only when I see the pictures,” said Abdurrahman Fawzi, a local businessman.

The evidence soon came with photos shown on TV of him holding up three bandaged fingers.

Libyans want to try him at home. Libya's interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim Al-Kib said Seif will be given a "fair trial." But observers doubted that given the the report of his fingers being cut off and the mob lynching of his father. The International Criminal Court wants to try him for crimes against humanity. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he would travel to Libya next week for talks with Libya's transitional government for Seif's extradition.