Libya's Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who crushed dissent then sought political comeback, dies at 53

Libya's Saif al-Islam Gaddafi went from his notorious father's heir apparent to a decade of captivity and obscurity in a remote hill town before launching a presidential bid that helped derail an attempted election.

Saif al-Islam's office said in a statement on Tuesday that he had been killed during a "direct confrontation" with four unknown gunmen who broke into his home.

The office of ​Libya's attorney general said investigators and forensic doctors examined Saif al-Islam's body and determined that he died from gunshot wounds and that the office was working to identify suspects.

Despite holding no official position, Saif al-Islam, 53, was ‌once seen as the most powerful figure in the oil-rich North African country after his father Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled for more than four decades.

Saif al-Islam ⁠shaped policy and mediated high-profile, sensitive diplomatic missions.

He led talks on Libya ‌abandoning its weapons of mass destruction and negotiated compensation for the families of those killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Determined to rid Libya of its pariah status, he engaged with the West and championed himself as a reformer, calling for a constitution and respect for human rights.

Educated at the London School of Economics and a fluent English speaker, he was once seen by many governments as the acceptable, Western-friendly face of Libya.

But when a rebellion broke out against Gaddafi's long rule in 2011, Saif al-Islam immediately chose family and clan loyalties over his many friendships to become an architect of a brutal crackdown on rebels, whom he called rats.

Speaking to Reuters at the ​time of the revolt, he said: "We fight here in Libya, we die here in Libya."

He warned that rivers of blood would flow and the government would fight to the last man and woman and bullet.

"All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country," he said, wagging his finger at the camera in a TV broadcast.

'I'M STAYING HERE'

After rebels took over the capital Tripoli, ‌Saif al-Islam tried to flee to neighbouring ‌Niger dressed as a Bedouin tribesman.

The Abu Bakr Sadik Brigade militia captured him on a desert road and flew him to the western town of Zintan about one month after his father was hunted down and summarily shot dead by rebels.

"I'm staying here. They'll empty their guns into me the second I go ⁠out there," he said in comments captured in an audio recording as hundreds of men thronged round an old Libyan air force transport plane.

Saif al-Islam was betrayed to his rebel captors by a Libyan nomad.

He spent the next six years detained in Zintan, a far cry from the charmed life he lived under Gaddafi when he had pet tigers, hunted with falcons and mingled with British high society on trips to London.

Human Rights Watch met him in Zintan. Hanan Salah, its Libya director, told Reuters at that time that he did ⁠not allege ill treatment. "We did raise concerns about Gaddafi being held in solitary confinement for most if not all of the time that he had been detained," she said.

Saif ⁠al-Islam was missing a tooth and said he had been isolated from the world and that he did not receive visitors.

He was, however, granted access to ‌a television with satellite channels and some books, she added.

In 2015, Saif al-Islam was sentenced to death by firing squad by a court in Tripoli for war crimes.

He was also wanted ‌by the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which issued an arrest warrant against him for "murder and persecution".

'YOU NEED TO COME BACK SLOWLY'

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi spent years underground in Zintan to avoid assassination after he was released by the militia in 2017 under an amnesty law. From 2016, he was allowed to contact people inside and outside Libya, said Mustafa Fetouri, a Libyan analyst with contacts in Saif al-Islam's inner circle.

Saif al-Islam received visitors almost every ‍week and debated politics and the state of the country. Sometimes he received gifts and books.

Wearing a traditional Libyan robe and turban, he appeared in the southern city of Sabha in 2021 to file his candidacy for the presidential elections.

He had been expected to play on nostalgia for Libya's relative stability before the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled his father and ushered in years of chaos and violence.

However, his candidacy was controversial and opposed by many of those who had suffered at the hands of his father's rule. Powerful armed groups that emerged from the rebel factions that rose up in 2011 rejected it outright.

As the election process ground on in late 2021 with no real agreement on the rules, Saif al-Islam's candidacy became one of the main points of contention.

He was disqualified because of his 2015 conviction, but when he tried to appeal the ruling, fighters blocked off the court. The ensuing arguments contributed to the collapse of the election process and Libya's return to political stalemate.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 2021, Saif al-Islam discussed his political strategy. "I've been away from the Libyan people for 10 years," he said. "You need to come back slowly, slowly. Like a striptease. You need ​to play with their minds a little."

"After Saif al-Islam was freed a few years ‌ago, he proved incapable of delivering speeches or producing public statements through the press or social media," said Jalel Harchaoui, a contributor to Britain's Royal United Services Institute think tank. "Yet his symbolic significance remained substantial. This symbolic stature constituted one of the main factors preventing the 2021 elections from proceeding."

"Now that he has been slain, most pro-Gaddafi factions will experience both diminished morale and anger. At the same time, one obstacle to holding elections in Libya has been removed," Harchaoui said.