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Gaddafi son Saif al-Islam freed by Libyan militia Gaddafi son Saif al-Islam freed by Libyan militia
(about 20 hours later)
An armed group in Libya says it has freed Saif al-Islam. The son of dead dictator Muammar Gaddafi had been in custody since November 2011. A Libyan militia says it has freed Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the most prominent son of the country’s late dictator Muammar Gaddafi, after more than five years in captivity.
The Abu Bakr al-Sadiq Brigade, a militia of former rebels that controls the town of Zintan in western Libya, said Islam was freed on Friday evening, “the 14th day of the month of Ramadan”, under an amnesty law promulgated by the parliament based in the east. The Abu Bakr al-Sadiq Brigade, based in Zintan, said it released Saif under an amnesty law passed last year by the eastern-based parliament.
The north African country has rival administrations, with the authorities in the east not recognising the UN-backed government of national accord (GNA) based in the capital. “We have decided to liberate Saif al-Islam Muammar Gaddafi. He is now free and has left the city of Zintan,” the militia said in a statement.
Political rivalry and fighting between militias has hampered Libya’s efforts to recover from the chaos that followed the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed Gaddafi. However, it is unclear whether Saif has left Zintan, and his freedom in Libya is partial. While the eastern parliament in Tobruk, to which Zintan is aligned, says he is a free man, Tripoli’s UN-backed government still considers him a war criminal, after a court sentenced him to death, in absentia, in 2015 for crimes during the revolution.
Rival authorities and militias have been vying for control of the oil-rich country ever since. If Saif leaves Libya, he may also face arrest on an indictment from the international criminal court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“We have decided to liberate Saif al-Islam Muammar Gaddafi. He is now free and has left the city of Zintan,” a statement said. His British lawyer, Karim Khan QC, said he was unable to confirm or deny reports of Saif’s freedom, but added he was in regular contact with his client, last visiting him in the autumn.
Zintan is controlled by armed groups opposed to the GNA. “I met him in Zintan and I’ve been in contact with him in relation to this issue,” he said. “He was in good physical health, I had lunch with him in Zintan and sat for several hours.”
Islam is the subject of an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the eight months of the uprising in 2011. Libya’s authorities and the international criminal court (ICC) are in dispute over who has the right to judge him. Saif al-Islam, whose name means sword of Islam, was once considered heir apparent to his late father. Before the 2011 Arab spring revolution he lived in a £10m mansion in Hampstead, London, was awarded a controversial doctorate from the London School of Economics and had contacts including the billionaire hedge fund investor Nat Rothschild, Labour peer Peter Mandelson and architect Norman Foster.
Saif al-Islam, 44, was born on 25 June 1972. His name means sword of Islam and he is the second of Gaddafi’s eight children, the eldest son of his second wife Safiya. He had no formal job under his father’s regime, but before the revolution had called for democratic reforms. During the uprising, however, he demanded harsh measures against rebel forces.
The fluent English speaker often appeared in the west as the public face of his father’s regime. He held no official post but had influence as a loyal emissary of the regime and architect of reform. When Libyan rebel forces, backed by Nato airstrikes, captured Tripoli in late 2011 he fled south, and was captured in the Sahara by the Abu Bakr al-Sadiq Brigade.
In July 2016 Saif al-Islam’s lawyers claimed that their client had been released under an amnesty issued by the unrecognised authorities in the east of the country. Saif could potentially emerge as a political actor in Libya’s chaotic and changing fabric, with tribes who formally backed his father likely to support him, along with some militias who once fought against his father.
But the GNA said the amnesty, enacted in April that year, cannot apply to persons accused of crimes against humanity. The country has been ravaged by civil war, with Tobruk forces in recent weeks capturing key airbases in the interior.
In all three of Gaddafi’s seven sons died during the revolution. One son who survived, Saadi, is still on trial in Libya for his alleged involvement in the crackdown and killing of a former football coach. Saif’s release comes a year after Tobruk forces allowed his mother, Safia, to visit eastern Libya, and follows a ruling in March by the European court of justice to lift a travel ban on Saif’s sister Aisha, who lives with her mother in Oman.
The deposed dictator’s widow Safiya and three more of their children found refuge in Algeria in the wake of the revolution and then later in Oman. Two of Saif’s brothers, Mutassim and Khamis, died in the revolution, while a third, Hannibal, lives in Lebanon. His youngest brother, Saadi, is detained in Tripoli awaiting trial on war crimes charges.
But the shockwaves created by the ouster and grisly killing of Gaddafi by rebels in his home town of Sirte continue to ripple across the troubled country.
Late in May Tripoli was rocked by fierce clashes between forces loyal to the unity government and rival militias, with more than 50 members of the pro-GNA forces reported killed.
Relying on militia support and pitted against the rival administration in the east, the GNA has struggled to assert its authority.