Crystal Dike
Hannibal Gaddafi, the youngest son of Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi, was released by Lebanese authorities on November 10, 2025, after nearly 10 years in detention without trial. Hannibal Gaddafi, now 49, had been held since 2015 over allegations that he withheld information about the fate of Lebanese Shia cleric Musa al-Sadr, who vanished in Libya in 1978 when Gaddafi was just two years old.
Human rights groups long condemned Hannibal Gaddafi’s detention as arbitrary and politically motivated. His lawyer, Laurent Bayon, told AFP that a bail of $900,000 (£682,938) had been paid, marking “the end of a nightmare for him that lasted 10 years.”
In October 2024, a Lebanese judge had initially set bail at $11 million, but this was reduced last week following an appeal by Hannibal Gaddafi’s defence team. Bayon said his client would now leave Lebanon for a “confidential destination,” adding that the case highlighted the lack of judicial independence in Lebanon.
Hannibal Gaddafi’s ordeal began in 2015 when he was briefly abducted by an armed group before being taken into custody by Lebanese authorities. After the fall of his father’s regime in 2011, he fled to Syria and later lived under house arrest in Oman with his wife, Aline Skaf.
Before Libya’s 2011 uprising, Hannibal Gaddafi was known for his lavish lifestyle, a stark contrast to his decade-long detention. His release now brings an end to one of the most controversial detentions in Lebanon’s modern history—though the disappearance of cleric Musa al-Sadr continues to strain relations between Libya and Lebanon more than four decades later.