A senior Lebanese judicial source has outlined the two decisive conditions for the release of Hannibal Gaddafi, the son of Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi, who has been held in Lebanon for more than a decade.
The first requirement is that Hannibal must provide any information he may have about the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr and his two companions during their 1978 visit to Libya.
The second is that the Libyan authorities must fully cooperate with the Lebanese judiciary by implementing the memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries and handing over a copy of their own post-2011 investigations into the case.
The source confirmed that Lebanese investigators have yet to receive any of these documents from Tripoli, a lack of cooperation that has effectively frozen progress in the case. This, he noted, places the responsibility for the ongoing detention squarely on Libya’s shoulders.
Lebanon’s legal stance holds that the crime of kidnapping Imam al-Sadr remains active until his fate is determined, meaning that anyone suspected of having relevant knowledge is considered complicit.
Given Hannibal’s upbringing within the ruling circle and his past role overseeing political prisons in Libya, he is believed to possess potentially critical information, particularly about Janzour Prison, where al-Sadr is suspected to have been held.
The judicial source stressed that Hannibal’s release is not on the table for now, and the fact that his detention has entered its tenth year does not pressure Lebanese authorities to act. The case, he said, is likely to remain stuck in political and judicial limbo between Beirut and Tripoli unless there is a significant breakthrough.
Hannibal Gaddafi was detained in December 2015 on charges of withholding information about the disappearance of Imam al-Sadr and his companions.
Over the past decade, multiple local and international efforts to resolve the matter have failed, leaving the case locked in stalemate, with no sign of a resolution on the horizon.
