Washington D.C. – Reuters, Nov. 10, 2025
Hannibal Gaddafi, youngest son of Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi, was released on Monday after almost a decade of detention without trial in Lebanon over the disappearance of a Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.
Gaddafi was abducted in 2015 by militants in Syria, where he was living in exile with his Lebanese wife and children after his father was killed in the uprising that erupted in Libya in 2011.
Lebanese authorities took custody of him that same year and accused him of concealing information about the fate of Imam Musa al-Sadr, a Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim cleric who disappeared with his companions while on a trip to Libya in 1978.
Hannibal was only two years old when Sadr disappeared and had held no senior official position in Libya as an adult.
Human rights organisations decried the circumstances around his detention, calling the charges “spurious.” In 2023, Gaddafi went on hunger strike to protest his incarceration and his health subsequently deteriorated, requiring hospitalisation.
