Libya: Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been assassinated in Libya, and the act is condemned by the African Union. Libyan Authorities have launched an investigation into his death.
As per the sources, on Tuesday Saif al-Islam was shot dead in the western Libyan city of Zintan, where he had been surviving for over a decade. Another source told that he was killed in his house by a group of four unidentified men. He said, “Four, armed men stormed the residence of Seif al-Islam Kadhafi after disabling surveillance cameras, then executed him.”
Further confirmation was made by his French lawyer – Marcel Ceccaldi that the son of Libya’s late longtime ruler, was killed on Tuesday by a “four-man commando group” in his home in western Libya’s Zintan. He added that for now, they don’t know who was behind the killing. He also stated that he was told by one of Seif al-Islam’s close associates about ten days ago, ‘that there were problems with his security.’
In past, Saif al-Islam was once widely regarded as the political heir to his father and was considered as the second most powerful figure in Libya before the 2011 uprising that led to the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.
Later following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, Saif al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan and remained in the city for years amid the ongoing legal battles, international warrants and political uncertainty.
Earlier, in 2021, he announced that he would rub for the position of President in the country, but those elections were indefinitely postponed. Hamid Kadhafi, his cousin, told that he had “fallen as a martyr”.
There has been no official statement yet from Libyan authorities on the assassination.
Under the revolutionary government of Gaddafi, the role of orthodox Islam in Libya and became progressively more important. Soon after taking office, the Gaddafi government began closing bars and nightclubs, banned entertainment deemed provocative or immodest, and made use of the Islamic calendar mandatory.