MUAMMAR GADDAFI’S SON RELEASED
LIBYA: SEIF al-islam, the son and one-time heir apparent of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has been released after more than five years in detention.
A statement by his captors, the Abu Bakr al-siddiq Battalion, said Seif al-islam was released on Friday, but gave no details on his whereabouts.
Local media reports suggested he was in the eastern city of Bayda with relatives. Battalion officials reached by The
Associated Press at Zintan, a town south of the capital Tripoli where it is based, confirmed his release. They declined to disclose his whereabouts, citing concerns over his safety. They said his release was decided as part of a recent pardon issued by the Libyan parliament based in the country’s eastern region.
The parliament in the city of Tobruk is part of one of three rival administrations in Libya, evidence of the chaos that has prevailed in the country since Gaddafi’s ouster and death.
Gaddafi’s son was captured by the battalion’s fighters late in 2011, the year when a popular uprising toppled Gadhafi after more than 40 years in power. He was later killed. The uprising later plunged the oil-rich North African nation into a ruinous civil war in which Seif al-islam led Gadhafi’s loyalist forces against the rebels. Seif al-islam was the likely successor to his father Moamer Kadhafi and had appeared destined to become the modern face of Libya.
But the Nato-backed revolution, inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring, swept through Libya and his fate changed for ever after his father and veteran dictator was ousted and killed in October that year. Days later in November 2011, Seif al-islam, whose name means sword of Islam, was arrested by an armed group and held in their northern hilltop stronghold of Zintan southwest of Tripoli. Since then he has been in a legal tug-of-war between the International Criminal Court and the Libyan authorities. Born on June 25, 1972, Seif al-islam is the second of Kadhafi’s eight children, the eldest son of his second wife Safiya.
Widely seen as Kadhafi’s heir-apparent, he was often described as the Libyan leader’s “playboy” son.