Switzerland gave a cautious welcome on Friday to the release of Swiss businessman Max Goeldi from a Libyan jail and voiced confidence that he would return home in coming days.
The Swiss foreign ministry, in a brief statement, also thanked Spain and Germany for their diplomatic efforts during the affair.
"We are very happy that our compatriot Max Goeldi has left prison. It is a step. Now it is a question of him being able to get home as quickly as possible and rejoin his family," it said.
Goeldi, head of Libya operations for Swiss engineering firm ABB was freed on Thursday, two days before completing a four-month sentence for violating immigration rules.
His supporters say he has been an innocent pawn in a dispute between Switzerland and oil exporter Libya that at one point also drew in the United States and Europe.
Goeldi's Libyan lawyer said he was staying in a Tripoli hotel awaiting an exit visa.
Goeldi has been barred from leaving Libya since July 2008, days after Geneva police arrested a son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on charges -- later dropped -- of abusing two domestic employees. Libyan officials deny any link between the two cases.
"The charges were always politically-motivated," Denise Graf of Amnesty International said on World Radio Switzerland.
The London-based human rights organisation says that Goeldi's trial was unfair and that anyone violating immigration laws does not deserve to serve time in prison.
Libya stopped oil exports to Switzerland, withdrew millions of dollars in assets from Swiss banks and earlier this year Muammar Gaddafi declared a "jihad" on Switzerland. His officials said he meant a trade embargo, not a holy war.
Goeldi was put on trial along with another Swiss citizen, Rachid Hamdani, who also holds Tunisian nationality, but Hamdani was allowed to leave Libya in February after a court cleared him of the charges.
"I am doubly happy. First that he is free and secondly that things went as planned," Hamdani told the Swiss daily Le Matin.
"The Libyan foreign minister gave his word that the authorities would respect the law and they did." - Reuters