After going on a hunger strike two weeks ago in protest of his imprisonment without charge since 2015, a son of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been treated at a hospital in Lebanon, the Lebanese interior minister announced on Thursday.
Since a prosecutor accused Hannibal Gaddafi of hiding evidence about the fate of Imam Musa al-Sadr, a Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim cleric who vanished while travelling to Libya in 1978, he has been arrested in Lebanon.
Hannibal Gaddafi, who was two years old at the time of Sadr’s disappearance, announced his decision to embark on a hunger strike earlier this month. He said he was a victim of injustice and was being falsely accused.
Lebanese Shi’ites have long held the Gaddafi government, which was toppled in 2011, responsible for Sadr’s disappearance, saying Libya kidnapped him during the trip.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi told newsmen that Hannibal Gaddafi was transported on Wednesday from the security forces building where he is being kept to a hospital after staff there felt his condition had worsened.
Gaddafi spokesperson Reem al-Dabri claimed that his health was getting worse. She referred to him as “a political hostage for undeclared reasons” and pointed out that he was still quite young at the time of Sadr’s disappearance.
In 2011, when an uprising against his father’s authority raged in Libya, Hannibal Gaddafi escaped the country. He ultimately made it to Syria, where Dabri claimed he was kidnapped and transferred to Lebanon in 2015.
Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebels in 2011.Sadr, who Libya said left the country safely, is widely believed to have been killed shortly after he was seized.
Sadr founded the Shi’ite Amal Movement, which alongside Hezbollah dominates Lebanese Shi’ite politics and has been led since 1980 by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
