Before the death of his father Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was considered the number two leader of Libya.
Saif Al Islam GaddafiThe son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been killed in Libya.
Ahmed Khalifa, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in the North African country, said on Tuesday that Gaddafi had been shot dead in the western Libyan city of Zintan, where he had lived for the past decade.
Recommended stories
3 List of itemsEnd of list
The 53-year-old’s killing was confirmed by his political adviser Abdullah Othman, but the exact circumstances of his death remained unclear.
Khaled al-Mishri, former chief Tripoli-based Higher Council of StateThe internationally recognized government body called for an “urgent and transparent investigation” into the killing in a social media post on Tuesday.
Gaddafi never held an official position in Libya, but was considered his father’s number two from 2000 to 2011. Muammar Gaddafi was killed Libyan opposition forces that ended his decades of rule.
Gaddafi was captured and imprisoned in Zintan in 2011 after trying to flee the North African country after the opposition seized Tripoli.
He was released in 2017 as part of a general amnesty.
leading role
A Western-educated and well-spoken man, Gaddafi presented a progressive face to the oppressive Libyan regime run by his father – and he played a prominent role in the early 2000s campaign to improve Libya’s relations with the West.
He received his PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2008, with his thesis looking at the role of civil society in improving global governance.
Gaddafi remained at the forefront of the violence that broke out across the country in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Speaking to the Reuters news agency during Libya’s popular uprising in 2011, he said: “We fight here in Libya, we die here in Libya.”
Rivers of blood will flow and the government will fight to the last man, woman and bullet, he warned.
“All of Libya will be destroyed. It will take us 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today everyone wants to be president or emir and everyone wants to run the country,” he said.
Gaddafi faced numerous allegations of torture and extreme violence against opponents of his father’s regime, and as of February 2011, he was on a United Nations sanctions list and banned from traveling.
He was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity committed in Libya in 2011.
After lengthy negotiations with the ICC, Libyan authorities were granted the authority to try Gaddafi for alleged war crimes. In 2015, a Tripoli court sentenced him to death in absentia.
After being released from detention in 2017, he spent several years underground in Zintan to avoid murder.
Since 2016, he has been allowed to contact people inside and outside Libya, said Mustafa Fetori, a Libyan analyst with contacts in Gaddafi’s inner circle.