The legal institutions in both Libya and Lebanon continue to give their different perspectives regarding the detention of Hannibal Gaddafi, the son of the former dictator of Libya Muammar Gaddafi. Hannibal Gaddafi is imprisoned in Lebanon and recently Libyan authorities have been calling for his release or handover to Libya, especially with claims from his lawyers that he has entered a hunger strike.
The Lebanese rapporteur of the official follow-up committee on the case of the disappearance of Musa Sadr, Judge Hassan Shami, said that the son of the late Libyan leader had made a detailed confession, which was recorded in a ten-page long manuscript, concerning the infamous case of Musa Sadr. Sadr was a prominent religious political leader in Lebanon whose disappearance during a visit to Libya in the late Nineteen Seventies became a long political contention between Lebanon and the former Libyan regime.
Shami added, in an interview with the Lebanese Al-Jadeed TV, that among what Hannibal admitted was the detention of Sadr between 1978 and 1982 somewhere within the municipality of Janzour, in the suburbs of the capital, Tripoli. Libyan legal authorities are stressing that they are closely following developments in the case of Hannibal Gaddafi, and will take the necessary legal measures to guarantee his rights.
The Libyan Attorney General Siddiq Alsour called on the Lebanese authorities to release Hannibal Gaddafi or to hand him over to Libya. Alsour stated in official correspondence, that the Libyan authorities had asked the Lebanese government to grant them the right to listen to the testimony of Hannibal Gaddafi and the information he provided regarding the case of Musa Sadr.
This came in a letter the Libyan Attorney General’s Office issued to the Lebanese Head of the Judicial Council, the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Lebanon, and the judicial investigator, Judge Zaher Hamadah. Alsour’s statement included that the Libyan authorities had notified the Lebanese side that Libyan law prohibits the extradition of Libyan citizens accused of felonies or misdemeanors, with the possibility of holding them accountable within Libyan territory.
Hannibal Gaddafi was arrested in Lebanon in 2015, on charges of concealing information about the fate of Imam Musa Sadr.
Source: Attorney General + Libya Al-Ahrar
