Gaddafi’s youngest son released after 10 years in Lebanese detention

Lebanon has released Hannibal Gaddafi, the youngest son of ousted Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, after nearly 10 years of detention without trial.

Lebanese authorities arrested Gaddafi, now 49, in 2015, accusing him of concealing information about the fate of a Lebanese Shiite cleric who disappeared in Libya in 1978, when he was just two years old.

Human rights groups denounced these accusations.

His lawyer told AFP news agency that bail of $900,000 (£682,938) had been paid.

“It’s the end of a 10-year nightmare for him,” Laurent Bayon said.

In October, a judge set bail at $11 million for Gaddafi’s release, but this bail was reduced last week after his defense team appealed, according to Agence France-Presse.

Bayonne said that his client would leave Lebanon to a “secret” destination.

“If Gaddafi could be arbitrarily detained in Lebanon for 10 years, it is because the judicial system was not independent,” Bayonne said.

In 2015, Gaddafi He was briefly kidnapped by an armed group in Lebanon before they are released. He was later arrested by the Lebanese authorities.

After rebels overthrew and killed his father in 2011, he fled to Syria and later lived under house arrest in Amman with his wife, Aline Skaf.

Before the fall of his father’s regime, Gaddafi was well known His lavish lifestyle.

The disappearance of Shiite cleric Musa al-Sadr in Libya in 1978 was a source of tension between Libya and Lebanon for decades.

Hannibal Gaddafi was only two years old at the time and had not held any high position in Libya as an adult.