The youngest son of former Libyan leader Muammar Kadhafi has been released from jail in Lebanon after nearly a decade in pre-trial detention for allegedly withholding information about a missing Lebanese cleric.
Hannibal Kadhafi, who was abducted in 2015 by militants in Syria where he was living with his family in exile after his father was killed in Libya in 2011, was released on Monday, Lebanon's National News Agency said.
He was taken into custody by Lebanon, which accused him of withholding information about the fate of Lebanese Shiite Imam Moussa el-Sadr, who disappeared during an official trip to Libya in 1978.
Lebanon blamed his disappearances on Muammar Kadhafi.
Hannibal Kadhafi, who is 49, was only two years old at the time, old, and he never held a senior position in Libya as an adult.
Human rights organisations decried Kadhafi’s detention, and he went on hunger strike in 2023 in protest.
Libya formally requested his release then, citing the deterioration in his health that required hospitalisation.
Lebanon's judiciary last month ordered that he be freed and set bail at $11 million, which judicial authorities reduced to roughly $900,000 last week, after his lawyers objected to the amount.
The updated bail decision also lifted a travel ban on Gaddafi, and his French lawyer Laurent Bayon said he was released after the bail was paid.
"The bail was paid this morning," Bayon told the AFP news agency Monday. "Hannibal Kadhafi will finally be free. It's the end of a nightmare for him that lasted 10 years."
Bayon said his client was set to leave Lebanon for a "confidential" destination, adding that he holds a Libyan passport.
Kadhafi’s defence team reportedly also withdrew a case against the Lebanese state they had filed in Geneva last month over holding him without trial.
Libya's Tripoli-based Government National Unity expressed appreciation to Lebanon for Kadhafi’s release, which it said would reactivate diplomatic relations between the two countries" which had been strained by the cleric’s disappearance.
(with newswires)
