Saif al-Islam, the most prominent son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been killed by armed assailants, according to multiple news reports.
Citing his lawyer and his political advisor, Al Jazeera reported that Saif al-Islam was killed in a house in Zintan during a confrontation with armed assailants. Zintan, located 136 kilometers away from the capital, Tripoli, was where he spent much of his time after his father was killed in 2011.
In a statement released recently, Al-Islam’s political team leader said “four masked men” stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination.” The statement said that he clashed with the assailants, who disabled the security cameras at the house “in a desperate attempt to conceal traces of their heinous crimes.”
Khaled al-Mishri, the former head of the Tripoli-based High State Council an internationally recognized government body called for an “urgent and transparent investigation” into the killing in a social media post.
Al-Islam never held an official position in Libya but was considered his father’s number two from 2000 until 2011, when Muammar Gaddafi was killed by Libyan opposition forces, ending his decades-long rule.
Saif al-Islam was captured and imprisoned in Zintan in 2011 after attempting to flee the North African country following the opposition’s takeover of Tripoli. He was released in 2017 as part of a general pardon and had lived in Zintan ever since.
