Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, the son of Libya’s late long-time ruler, was killed on Tuesday when gunmen stormed his home in the western Libyan town of Zintan, his French lawyer Marcel Ceccaldi told AFP.
“He was killed at around 2:00 pm (1200 GMT) on Tuesday in his home in Zintan by a four-man commando,” Ceccaldi said.
Seif al-Islam, 53, had been regarded by some as a potential successor to his father, despite being the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged crimes against humanity.
In 2021, he announced his intention to run for president, but the elections were later postponed indefinitely.
His adviser, Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, told Libya’s Al-Ahrar television channel that four unidentified men stormed the house, disabled the surveillance cameras and then “executed him”.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the killing.
Ceccaldi said a close associate of Seif al-Islam had warned him days earlier that there were “problems with his security”.
“So much so that the head of the Kadhafi tribe called Seif and told him, ‘I will send you people to ensure your security.’ But Seif refused,” he said.
Although Seif al-Islam held no formal position under his father’s rule, he was often described as Libya’s de facto prime minister and had cultivated an image as a moderate and reformer before the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
That image quickly unravelled, however, when he threatened “rivers of blood” in response to the revolt.
A divided country
Seif al-Islam was arrested in November 2011 in southern Libya following the ICC warrant issued in The Hague.
A court in Tripoli later sentenced him to death in 2015 after a rapid trial, but he was subsequently granted an amnesty.
His whereabouts had long remained unclear, with Ceccaldi saying he “often moved around”.
Libya analyst Emadeddin Badi said Seif al-Islam’s death was “likely to cast him as a martyr for a significant segment of the population, while also reshaping electoral dynamics by removing a major obstacle to presidential elections ”.
“His candidacy and potential success had been a central point of contention,” Badi wrote on X.
Moamer Kadhafi’s last spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, also reacted on social media.
“They killed him treacherously. He wanted a united, sovereign Libya, safe for all its people,” he wrote.
“I spoke with him two days ago. He spoke of nothing but a peaceful Libya and the safety of its people.”
Libya has struggled to recover from the chaos that followed a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 which toppled long-time ruler Moamer Kadhafi.
The country remains divided between a UN-backed government based in Tripoli and a rival eastern administration supported by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.
