By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 11 December 2015:
Hannibal Qaddafi was kidnapped in Lebanon today, beaten up and later freed in circumstances that . . .[restrict]are not yet entirely clear.
The 40-year old son of Muammar Qaddafi was shown in a two-and-a-half minute clip on Beirut’s Aljadeed TV. He was sporting two black eyes and a damaged nose.
During his appearance he appealed for anyone who had information about the 1978 disappearance in Libya of prominent Lebanese Shia cleric Sheikh Musa Sadr to come forward. Despite the evidence, Hannibal also said that he was in good health, happy and relaxed.
He is believed to have been grabbed by gunmen in Beirut while visiting his Lebanese wife.
Hannibal fled Tripoli during the revolution and went with his mother and other members of his family to Algeria. They were thrown out of that country in 2013 when his sister, Aisha, apparently set fire to the presidential palace in which they had been living.
Despite Libyan demands for their extradition, the family was given sanctuary in Oman, where it had been thought they have since remained.
It is not yet clear who kidnapped Hannibal or how he came to be released. However, it is being reporetd that he was taken by members of the Shiite Amal group, founded by Sadr. He was reportedly released in Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, a Shiite stronghold.
Sadr, who was on an official visit to Libya, is generally believed to have been murdered on the orders of the dictator. One report has it that he had an argument with Qaddafi during which he told him he knew nothing about Islam. Some of Sadr’s followers insisted that he and his two colleagues, Sheikh Muhammad Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine, had been imprisoned and hoped that they would be released with the fall of the regime. At the time of the disappearances, Qaddafi’s people claimed that Sadr and his party had left Libya for Italy.
Shortly before he was extradited from Mauritania to Libya in 2012, Qaddafi’s former security chief Abdullah Senussi was questioned by Lebanese investigators about Sadr’s disappearance.
Successive Libyan governments have promised to investigate what happened to the three men. [/restrict]
