SAIF AL-ISLAM GADAFFI, son of murdered Libyan leader, Muammar Gadaffi, has been released from prison, according to the militia that has held him for five years.
He has been freed by the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion militia, which controls the area of Zintan, southwest of the capital of Tripoli. He was captured in Zintan in November 2011, a month after his father’s assassination, and was sentenced to death in absentia in 2015 during a mass trial of a number of former officials of the Gadaffi government in Tripoli.
In a statement announcing he was freed last Friday, the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion said: ‘The citizen Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gadaffi was released in accordance with the law of the General Afwa issued by parliament, the only legitimate authority in the country,’ the statement read.
The Libya Herald reported that the release was in response to the Tobruk-based House of Representatives’ amnesty for political prisoners. Saif al-Islam Gadaffi has been sentenced to death in absentia by a court in the capital Tripoli, in the west of the country, where control is in the hands of the rival, UN-backed Government of National Accord.
Previous reports of Saif al-Islam Gadaffi’s release proved to be false. The 44-year-old Saif al-Islam is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he is accused of ‘crimes against humanity’ while fighting the western-backed coup that brought down Libya’s legitimate government in 2011.
