Libya’s Saif al-Islam Gaddafi went from his notorious father’s heir apparent to a decade of captivity and obscurity in a remote hill town before launching a presidential bid that helped derail an attempted election.
Details surrounding the circumstances of his death were not immediately clear.
Despite holding no official position, he was once seen as the most powerful figure in the oil-rich North African country after his autocrat father Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled for more than four decades.
Saif al-Islam shaped policy and mediated high-profile, sensitive diplomatic missions.
Determined to rid Libya of its pariah status, Saif al-Islam engaged with the West and championed himself as a reformer, calling for a constitution and respect for human rights.
Educated at the London School of Economics and a fluent English speaker, he was once seen by many governments as the acceptable, Western-friendly face of Libya.
But when a rebellion broke out against Gaddafi’s long rule in 2011, Saif al-Islam immediately chose family and clan loyalties over his many friendships to become an architect of a brutal crackdown on rebels, whom he called rats.
Speaking to Reuters at the time of the revolt, he said: “We fight here in Libya, we die here in Libya.”
He warned that rivers of blood would flow and the government would fight to the last man and woman and bullet.
“All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country,” he said, wagging his finger at the camera in a television broadcast.
‘I’M STAYING HERE’
He spent the next six years detained in Zintan, a far cry from the charmed life he lived under Gaddafi when he had pet tigers, hunted with falcons and mingled with British high society on trips to London.
In 2015, Saif al-Islam was sentenced to death by firing squad by a court in Tripoli for war crimes.
Saif al-Islam is also wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for war crimes. The court issued an arrest warrant against him for “murder and persecution”.
–Reuters–
