Gaddafi son plots return after vanishing

A son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi who vanished six years ago and was thought to have died has reappeared and announced his intention to re-enter politics.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who is still wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, said he intends to unify Libya at the head of his father’s “Green movement”.

In his first public remarks since he was sentenced to death by a Libyan court in 2015, the 49-year-old claimed he would command widespread support from the Libyan public fed up with the factions who have been fighting for control of the country.

“It’s not in their interest to have a strong Government,” he told The New York Times. “That’s why they are afraid of the elections.

“They are against the idea of a president. They are against the idea of a state, a Government that has legitimacy derived from the people.”

He avoided the question of whether he planned to run for president in elections set for December.

“You need to come back slowly, slowly. Like a striptease,” he said. “You need to play with their minds a little.”

He also defended his father’s record in power and refused to apologise for atrocities committed by his regime, saying most Libyans now thought the Government should have taken an even harder line.

“What happened in Libya was not a revolution,” he said. “You can call it a civil war, or days of evil.”

The second son of long-serving dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Saif alIslam was educated at university in Tripoli and studied for an MBA in Vienna and a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He was seen as a modernising figure under his father’s rule and was credited by some for presiding over a brief period of liberalisation and reform in the regime’s last few years.

That was tarnished when he backed the Government crackdown against the opposing protests in 2011, warning of “rivers of blood” if the revolution was not averted.

He was captured in southern Libya after his father’s regime collapsed later that year, and held prisoner by a militia group in Zintan.

The Zintanis refused to hand him over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which has indicted him for war crimes allegedly committed during the war in 2011. They did allow him to stand trial by video link in front of a court in Tripoli, but refused to hand him over to authorities when he was found guilty and was sentenced to death.

Rumours have swirled ever since that he was either dead or planning a comeback.