iDeemlawfulSaif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the late former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been assassinated by suspected gunmen in Libya.
According to Al Jazeera, Saif al-Islam was reportedly shot dead in the western Libyan city of Zintan, where he had been based for the past decade.
Reports indicated that he was killed by four individuals, although further details were not immediately disclosed.
Abdullah Othman, Saif al-Islam’s political adviser, confirmed the death in a brief Facebook post but did not provide information on the circumstances or those responsible.
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His French lawyer, Marcel Ceccaldi, told AFP that the identities of the attackers were still unknown.
He said, “For now, we don’t know” who carried out the killing, Ceccaldi said, adding that he had been informed by one of Saif al-Islam’s close associates about ten days earlier “that there were problems with his security”.
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The death of the 53-year-old was confirmed by his political adviser, Abdullah Othman, though the precise circumstances surrounding the killing remained unclear at the time of filing this report.
Khaled al-Mishri, former head of the Tripoli-based High State Council, an internationally recognised government institution, called for an “urgent and transparent investigation” into the assassination in a social media post on Tuesday.
Saif al-Islam was among the most prominent political figures in Libya following the fall of his father, who ruled the oil-rich North African country from 1969 until he was overthrown and killed during the 2011 uprising.
Born in 1972, Saif al-Islam played a key role in Libya’s renewed engagement with Western nations in the early 2000s and was widely regarded as the reformist face of the Gaddafi regime.
After the collapse of the Gaddafi government, he was captured by a militia in the western city of Zintan, where he remained in detention for nearly six years. The International Criminal Court had sought his extradition over alleged crimes against humanity connected to the violent suppression of protests in 2011.
In 2015, a court in Tripoli sentenced him to death in absentia. He was released from custody in 2017 but largely stayed out of public view.
Libyan analyst Mustafa Fetouri previously said Saif al-Islam was later permitted limited contact with allies both within and outside Libya, while living in hiding to avoid assassination.