Gadhafi’s Son Reveals Info on Sadr to Judge as Arrest Warrant Issued

Local Editor

The Lebanese judiciary issued Monday an arrest warrant for Hannibal Moammar Gadhafi, who was handed over Friday to Lebanese authorities after a brief abduction in Lebanon at the hands of an armed group.

The son of late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi Monday on charges of hiding information related to the disappearance of a top Lebanese Muslim cleric in Libya 37 years ago.

Judge Zaher Hamadeh issued the warrant after questioning Hannibal Gadhafi at the main courthouse, known locally as the Justice Palace. Hamadeh had asked that Gadhafi be brought in for questioning on whether he has information related to the case of Imam Moussa al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr and two companions went missing in 1978 during an official visit to Libya at the invitation of Moammar Gadhafi. Lebanon has blamed Moammar Gadhafi for his disappearance, and relations between the two countries have been tense over the case ever since.

State-run National News Agency said Hannibal Gadhafi, who was three in 1978, was abducted Thursday "after being lured from Syria into a town near Baalbek" and that his captors had demanded "information about Imam Moussa al-Sadr and his two companions."

Later on Friday, the agency said Hannibal was "handed over to the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch after his captors left him on the Baalbek-Homs international highway near the northern Bekaa town of al-Jamaliyeh."

He appeared in a video aired late Friday on local Al-Jadeed TV saying: "My father blamed [former Libyan premier] Abdul Salam Jalloud in the case of al-Sadr's disappearance".

The TV network said Hannibal told Judge Hamadeh that his brother Mutassem, who was killed during Libya's uprising, "had information about Imam al-Sadr."

"The man who impersonated the imam and wore his clothes to travel to Rome is a well-known figure who currently lives in an Arab country," Hannibal added, according to al-Jadeed.

Al-Sadr's family has filed a lawsuit against Hannibal Gadhafi, accusing him of hiding information. The family believes he may still be alive in a Libyan prison. Libya has maintained that the cleric and his two traveling companions left Tripoli in 1978 on a flight to Rome.

Hannibal Gadhafi, who is married to a Lebanese woman, was arrested in 2008 for allegedly beating up two servants in a Geneva luxury hotel, sparking a diplomatic spat that dragged on for months. In 2005, a French court convicted him of striking a pregnant companion in a Paris hotel. He was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and a small fine.

He fled to Algeria after Tripoli fell, along with his mother and several other relatives. Media reports said he then moved to Syria, where he had been living until he came to Lebanon.

He is wanted by Interpol for crimes related to the autocratic rule of his father, who was killed by opposition fighters in 2011 following the uprising in Libya, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team