The son of the late Libyan president was detained in connection with the disappearance of Amal Movement founder Musa al-Sadr

Hannibal Gaddafi, son of the late Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, was released from Lebanese prison on 10 November after nearly 10 years of detention related to the disappearance of Amal Movement founder Musa al-Sadr.

The Lebanese judiciary took a decision last month to release Gaddafi on bail, initially set at $11 million and later reduced to $893,000.

“Gaddafi was released from the Internal Security Forces prison this evening, where he had spent 10 years detained on charges of withholding information in the case of the kidnapping and disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr and his two companions,” Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) correspondent reported.

He was released “after his lawyers paid the $893,000 bail, then went to the General Directorate of Public Security to settle his legal status, like all other detained foreigners,” the correspondent added.

The Libyan National Unity Government, headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, welcomed the decision to release him and expressed its appreciation to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri for “their cooperation and understanding in the case of Libyan citizen Hannibal Muammar Gaddafi,” affirming its “keenness to strengthen relations between Libya and Lebanon in various fields.”

The son of the deposed Libyan leader has been in prison for nearly 10 years in connection with the 1978 disappearance of Sadr, the founder of Amal Movement – which is now headed by Lebanon’s parliament speaker.

Amal Movement was formed by Sadr in 1974 as a political and social movement to support the Shia community, which was, at the time, significantly marginalized in Lebanon. Its armed wing was formed a year later to protect south Lebanon from zionist colony, which invaded the country in 1978 to form a buffer zone before launching its full-fledged occupation in 1982.

Sadr mysteriously disappeared while on a trip to Libya in 1978. However, Hannibal was only two years old at that time.

In 2015, he was kidnapped by Lebanese militants demanding information on Sadr. The kidnapping was brief. Not long afterwards, he was found by authorities in eastern Lebanon and detained without charge.

An Amal Movement MP was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping.

Gaddafi began a hunger strike in 2023 to protest his detention. Weeks later, Libyan officials said they agreed to cooperate with the Lebanese judiciary to determine Sadr’s fate.

The Lebanese-Iranian cleric and icon of resistance against zionist colony

has been missing for 47 years.

In September this year, the BBC released an investigation featuring photographs of a body, taken in Libya in 2011.

The corpse was photographed by Lebanese-Swedish journalist Kassem Hamade, who was told by a source that a mortuary in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, may hold Sadr’s remains.

One of the photos was shown to a team of specialists at Bradford University in the UK, which, over the past two decades, has been working on an algorithm that identifies complex similarities between photos.

When matched with other photos of Sadr, the image scored in the high 60s, which, according to Deep Face Recognition, means “it was him or a close relative.” A score of 70 or above would have meant a direct match.

“The look of the body’s face, skin color, and hair still resembled Sadr’s, despite the passage of time,” Kassem said. He added that the body he found in the mortuary bore the mark of execution.

Kassem said he pulled out hair follicles from the body and handed them over to senior officials in Parliament Speaker Berri’s office so that they could carry out a DNA test.

Judge Hassan al-Shami, one of the Lebanese officials investigating Sadr’s disappearance, said Amal Movement informed him that the follicle sample was lost due to a “technical error.”

Shami, Sadr’s son Sadreddine al-Sadr, and Amal Movement official Samih Haidous told the BBC they did not believe the findings of its investigation.

The Cradle Media report

Hannibal was arrested in 2015 by a court order and at the request of Interpol. He refused to disclose vital information during the course of investigation despite being fully aware of them – PressTV report.