Libya’s Presidential Council called on Monday, June 26, for the immediate and unconditional release of the son of the late Libyan president Moammar Gaddafi, Hannibal, who has been detained in Lebanon for over eight years without a trial.
“We call for pressuring the Lebanese authorities into releasing Hannibal Gaddafi unconditionally, as there are no legal, political or criminal justifications for his continued imprisonment,” the council said in a statement.
“We hold the officials in Lebanon responsible for Hannibal Gaddafi’s safety and life,” the statement added.
Gaddafi’s health has been deteriorating since he started a hunger strike in jail on June 2 to protest his prolonged imprisonment without a trial.
According to one of his lawyers, Hannibal, 47, “has been suffering from muscle spasms as well dizziness and headaches.”
The lawyer, Paul Romanos, told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV that a doctor has been monitoring his health on a daily basis.
Hannibal Gaddafi, the youngest son of Muammar Gaddafi, has been held in detention at the headquarters of the Internal Security Forces in Beirut since 2015. His imprisonment is linked to the case of the disappearance of Shiite cleric Imam Moussa al Sadr, which occurred during a visit to Tripoli, Libya in 1978. Notably, Hannibal was merely three years old at the time of the incident.
Sadr was one of the founders of the Amal Movement. Lebanon, notably the Shiite community, blamed Muammar Gaddafi for his disappearance.
In 2011, after the fall of Tripoli and his father’s death at the hands of opposition fighters, Hannibal fled to neighboring Algeria with his wife and some of his siblings. They later took asylum in Syria as political refugees under Bashar al-Assad’s government.
According to his lawyers, Hannibal was “lured” in 2015 to the Syrian-Lebanese border and was briefly kidnapped and taken to Lebanon by a group seeking answers about Sadr’s disappearance.
He was released by his kidnappers shortly after and then taken to Beirut under the custody of the Lebanese authorities.
In 2016, a Lebanese judge charged Hannibal with withholding information about Sadr’s disappearance after the imam’s family filed a lawsuit against him over his alleged role in the case.
