Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the most famous son of the slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafihave killed In the western city of Zintan.

Saif al-Islam, 53 when he was killed, was Gaddafi’s second son and had lived in Zintan since 2011, first in prison and then a free man in 2017, plotting a return to politics.

People close to him, including his political adviser Abdullah Othman and his lawyer Khalid Zaidi, confirmed his death on Tuesday, but the circumstances remained unclear.

Before the 2011 uprising, Saif al-Islam was considered by many to be his father’s heir apparent and Libya’s second most powerful person.

He has remained prominent in the violence unfolding in Libya. arab spring Protests led to civil war. There are many accusations that he inflicted torture and extreme violence on opponents of his father’s rule. In February 2011, he was placed on a United Nations sanctions list and banned from traveling.

NATO began bombing Libya in March 2011 after the United Nations authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Gaddafi’s forces in the civil war.

In June 2011, Saif al-Islam announced that his father was willing to hold elections and step down if he did not win them. However, NATO rejected the offer and the bombing of Libya continued.

In late June, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Saif al-Islam, but he remained at large until his father died On October 20, 2011, he and his brother Mutassim were in Sirte.

prison

After lengthy negotiations with the ICC, which has long sought Seif al-Islam’s extradition, Libyan officials have been authorized to try Seif al-Islam in Libya for war crimes he committed during the 2011 uprising.

At the time, Saif al-Islam’s defense lawyers worried that the trial in Libya was motivated not by justice but by a desire for revenge. The United Nations estimates that as many as 15,000 people have been killed in the conflict, while Libya’s National Transitional Council puts the number at as high as 30,000.

2014, Saif Islam Appear via video link He was tried in a Tripoli court because he was imprisoned in Zintan at the time. In July 2015, a Tripoli court sentenced him to death in absentia.

However, in 2017 he was released by the Abu Bakr as-Siddiq Battalion, a militia that controls Zintan, as part of an amnesty issued by authorities in eastern Libya that is not internationally recognized.

But he has not reappeared in public for years and continues to be wanted by the International Criminal Court. In July 2021, Saif al-Islam gave a rare interview to the New York Times, in which he accused the Libyan authorities of being “afraid of… elections.”

Explaining his underground status, he said he had “been away from the Libyan people for ten years.”

“You need to come back slowly, slowly. It’s like a striptease,” he added.

In November 2021, he made his first public appearance in years in the city of Sabha, where he applied to run for Libya’s president in an attempt to revive the ambitions of his father’s former supporters.

He was initially barred and later reinstated, but the election failed to take place amid political instability in Libya, where two governments are vying for power.

The face of “progress”

Saif al-Islam was a Western-educated, well-spoken man who presented a progressive side to the oppressive Libyan government. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2008. His dissertation examines the role of civil society in global governance reform.

He was prominent in calling for political reform and actively worked to repair Libya’s relations with the West between 2000 and the start of the uprising in 2011.

The London School of Economics is later condemned In seeking to establish relations with the Libyan regime, he accepted Seif al-Islam as a student and signed an agreement on a $2.4 million donation from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation on the day of his doctoral degree ceremony.

As an internationally renowned negotiator and influencer, Saif al-Islam can achieve many victories and make a difference. He played a key role in nuclear negotiations with Western countries, including USA and the UK.

He also stands out during negotiations compensation Help was provided to the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, the Berlin nightclub attack and the explosion of UTA Flight 772 over the Sahara Desert.

He also brokered the release of six medical staff, five of whom were Bulgarian, who were accused of infecting children with HIV in Libya in the late 1990s. The medical staff were imprisoned for eight years in 1999 and upon their release announced that they had been tortured in detention.

He has several other proposals, including “Isratine,” a proposal to permanently resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a secular one-state solution. He also chaired peace negotiations between the Philippine government and leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, leading to the signing of a peace agreement in 2001.