Image: (AP Photo/Abdel Magid al-Fergany, File)
Hannibal Gaddafi, the youngest son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been released from detention in Lebanon after nearly ten years without trial.The 49-year-old was arrested by Lebanese authorities in 2015 on charges of withholding information about the fate of Lebanese Shia cleric Musa al-Sadr, who vanished in Libya in 1978—when Gaddafi was just two years old.Human rights organisations had long criticised his detention as arbitrary. His lawyer, Laurent Bayon, confirmed to AFP that a bail of $900,000 (£683,000) had been paid. “It’s the end of a nightmare for him that lasted ten years,” Bayon said.A judge had earlier set bail at $11 million, but this was reduced last week after an appeal by Gaddafi’s defence team. Bayon added that his client would now leave Lebanon for a “confidential destination”.He also blamed Lebanon’s judiciary for allowing such prolonged detention, saying it was “because the justice system was not independent”.Gaddafi was briefly abducted by an armed group in Lebanon in 2015 before being handed over to the authorities. Following his father’s overthrow and death in 2011, he fled to Syria and later lived under house arrest in Oman with his wife, Aline Skaf.Before the fall of his father’s regime, Hannibal Gaddafi was known for his opulent lifestyle. The disappearance of Musa al-Sadr has long strained relations between Lebanon and Libya, though Hannibal had no political role in his father’s government.