Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Son of Former Libyan Leader, Assassinated

The son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam, has been assassinated.

An Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in Libya, Ahmed Khalifa, reported on Tuesday that Saif al-Islam was shot dead in the western Libyan city of Zintan, where he had been based for over a decade.

Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim told Al-Ahrar TV channel that Seif al-Islam was killed in his house by a group of four unidentified men.

“Four armed men stormed the residence of Seif al-Islam Kadhafi after disabling surveillance cameras, then executed him,” Abdurrahim was reported as saying.

Further confirmation stated that the son of Libya’s late longtime ruler, was killed on Tuesday by a “four-man commando” in his home in western Libya’s Zintan, his French lawyer, Marcel Ceccaldi, told AFP.

“For now, we don’t know” who was behind the killing, Ceccaldi said, adding that he was told by one of Seif al-Islam’s close associates about ten days ago “that there were problems with his security”.

Saif al-Islam, who was once widely regarded as the political heir to his father, was considered the second most powerful figure in Libya before the 2011 uprising that led to the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

Following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, Saif al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan and remained in the city for years amid legal battles, international warrants, and political uncertainty.

In 2021, he announced he would run for president, but those elections were indefinitely postponed.

Hamid Kadhafi, his cousin, told Al-Ahrar TV he had “fallen as a martyr”.