Saif Islam Gadhafi, son of late Libyan ruler, killed in gunfight: What to know
Gadhafi was a key figure in his father Moammar Gadhafi's regime, and faced legal prosecution for his alleged roles in crimes against Libyans.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of longtime Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, was shot dead in the North African country, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday.
Political advisers to Gadhafi said he was killed in a “treacherous and cowardly” act in the northwest Libyan city of Zintan. According to them, four individuals stormed his house, disabled security cameras and then killed him, the official Libyan News Agency reported.
Gadhafi’s French lawyer, Marcel Ceccaldi, told Agence France-Presse that he is unsure who killed him, adding that there were “problems with his security” recently.
Gadhafi had been based in Zintan for the past decade, according to reports.
Who is Saif Gadhafi? Gadhafi, who was 53 years old, was one of the most prominent figures connected to Libya’s former regime. He was the second son of Moammar Gadhafi — who ruled Libya from 1969 to 2011 — and was a central figure in his father’s inner circle, often serving as a public face for the regime in Western and international forums.
Despite his status as a member of the ruling family, Gadhafi never held a formal government position, but effectively served as the country’s de facto prime minister and second-most-powerful person from 2000 to 2011.
Following the uprisings in Libya in 2011, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Gadhafi, his father and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi. The ICC charged Saif with crimes against humanity, alleging that “as the de facto prime minister … [he] devised and implemented a state-level policy to quell, including by use of lethal force, civilian demonstrations in 2011.”
In 2014, Gadhafi was put on trial in Tripoli for crimes committed during the 2011 uprising, but he was not physically present in the courtroom, as he was then being held in Zintan by local militias who refused to transfer him. While he briefly appeared via video, the trial largely proceeded in absentia, and in July 2015 he was sentenced to death.
After being held in Zintan for several years following the 2011 civil war, Gadhafi was released in 2017 under an amnesty framework issued by Libya’s eastern-based authorities.
Know more: Libya has been mired in political violence since the elder Gadhafi was overthrown in the 2011 NATO-backed uprising. The country fought a civil war from 2014 to 2020, ending in a truce between the internationally recognized government in Tripoli and the eastern-based Libyan National Army, led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter.
A degree of calm has prevailed since the ceasefire, but the country remains divided into two administrations — one led by Hifter and the other by the Government of National Unity in Tripoli — and sporadic clashes still occur. Last week, fighting broke out between rival government-affiliated factions in the western city of Zawiya.
On Monday, Hifter’s forces said they sustained an attack from an unspecified group near the southern border with Chad.
