On on Saturday, Hannibal Gaddafi, son of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, declared his decision to begin an open-ended hunger strike in his Lebanese prison cell, protesting his ongoing imprisonment and conditions for the past 8 years without a trial.
In a statement released by his lawyer, Paul Romanos, Hannibal stated, “in the face of persistent injustice and abuse against me, it is time for me to be released after more than a decade in prison for an arrest and allegations of a crime I did not commit.”
He questioned how, in a country of law and freedoms, such blatant violations of human rights could be ignored. “How is it conceivable that a political prisoner is left without a fair trial for all these years?”
He continued, “after persistent oppression against me, with no accountability, and deafening silence from those trusted to safeguard human rights, discarding its charter to the wind, I announce my hunger strike and hold all those who perpetuate injustice against me responsible for the consequences.”
Hannibal Gaddafi was arrested in Lebanon in 2015. After his father’s death, he sought refuge in Syria but was kidnapped there by members of the Lebanese Yacoub family.
The Lebanese judiciary accuses Moammar Gaddafi’s son of “concealing information related to the fate of Imam Musa al-Sadr and his companions, Sheikh Mohammed Yacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddin, who disappeared in the Libyan capital Tripoli in 1978, upon their arrival at the invitation of Moammar Gaddafi, and participating in the crime of their disappearance.”
Last September, Ahmed Gaddaf Al-Dam called for the release of Hannibal. He said that “his kidnapping is an affront to Lebanon and the Lebanese judiciary. It bears nothing but a historical shame for its perpetrator, who alone bears the brunt of this behaviour.”
“Securing his release would open a new and bright page for Libyan-Lebanese relations,” Gaddaf Al-Dam told Sputnik. “We will not stop demanding Hannibal’s release.”
