By Blessing Nweke
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and once heir-apparent of Libya’s late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, has been killed, Libyan officials said Tuesday, marking a dramatic chapter in the country’s long and violent post-revolution history.
The 53- year-old was killed in the town of Zintan, about 85 miles southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to two security officials in western Libya who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. Khaled al-Zaidi, a lawyer for Seif al-Islam, confirmed his death in a Facebook post without providing further details.
Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, who represented Seif al-Islam in U.N.-brokered political talks aimed at resolving Libya’s conflict, also announced the death on Facebook. Libyan news outlet Fawasel Media cited Abdurrahim as saying armed men killed Seif al-Islam inside his home, adding that prosecutors had opened an investigation.
In a later statement, Seif al-Islam’s political team said that “four masked men” stormed his residence and shot him dead in what it described as a “cowardly and treacherous assassination.” The statement said he resisted the attackers, who allegedly shut down the home’s CCTV cameras to conceal evidence.
Born in June 1972 in Tripoli, Seif al-Islam was long viewed as the reformist face of the Gadhafi regime. Educated in Britain, he studied for a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and was seen by some as a potential successor to his father.
Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in 2011 during a NATO-backed uprising, plunging Libya into years of instability. Seif al-Islam was captured later that year, released in 2017 under an amnesty, and lived in Zintan. Convicted in absentia in 2015 and wanted by the International Criminal Court, he re-emerged politically in 2021 with a controversial presidential bid that never reached the ballot.
Original article
Comments