Libya Ask Lebanon To Release Gaddafi’s Detained Son Due To Declining Health

The health of one of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s sons who has been detained in Lebanon without being charged since 2015 is seriously deteriorating. Due to this, Libya’s court officials have formally requested Lebanon to free him.

Hannibal Gaddafi’s health has gotten worse since he went on a hunger strike on June 3 to protest his continued arrest without charge,

Since then, he has been admitted to the hospital at least twice, and he has only been consuming little amounts of water.

Al-Sediq al-Sour, the general prosecutor of Libya, allegedly requested information about Hannibal Gaddafi from his counterpart Ghassan Oueidat in Lebanon earlier this month, according to two Lebanese court officials.

The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

The note stated that Lebanon’s cooperation in this matter could help reveal the truth regarding the fate of a prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric, Moussa al-Sadr, who went missing in Libya in 1978.

It questioned why Mr Gaddafi was being held and asked that he be either handed over to Libya or be allowed to return to Syria, where he had been living in exile with his Lebanese wife, Aline Skaf, and children until he was abducted and brought to Lebanon eight years ago.

The Lebanese prosecutor then referred the case to Zaher Hamadeh, the investigative judge in the missing cleric’s case, who is studying the Libyan request and would respond in time.

Hannibal Gaddafi has been detained in Lebanon since 2015 after he was abducted by Lebanese militants demanding information on the whereabouts of the cleric.

Lebanese police later announced it had picked up Mr Gaddafi from the city of Baalbek in north-eastern Lebanon, where he was being held. He has since been held in a Beirut jail.

The disappearance of Mr al-Sadr in 1978 has been a long-standing sore point in Lebanon. The cleric’s family believes he may still be alive in a Libyan prison, though most Lebanese presume Mr al-Sadr is dead. He would be 94 years old.

He was the founder of the Amal group, Arabic for “hope”, and an acronym for the militia’s Arabic name, the Lebanese Resistance Brigades. The group later fought in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. Lebanon’s powerful parliament speaker Nabih Berri heads the group.

Most of Mr al-Sadr’s followers are convinced that Muammar Gaddafi ordered Mr al-Sadr killed in a dispute over Libyan payments to Lebanese militias.

Libya has maintained that the cleric and his two travelling companions left Tripoli in 1978 on a flight to Rome and suggested he was a victim of a power struggle among Shiites.

Muammar Gaddafi was killed by opposition fighters during Libya’s 2011 uprising turned civil war, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

Hannibal Gaddafi, who was born two years before Mr al-Sadr disappeared, fled to Algeria after his father was toppled and Tripoli fell to opposition fighters, along with his mother and several other relatives. He later made it to Syria where he was given political asylum and stayed there until he was abducted.

Syrian authorities at the time blasted Hannibal Gaddafi’s seizure “by an armed gang” and have been demanding he be returned to Syria.