Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, son of late Libyan ruler Moammar al-Gaddafi, denied allegations that he had struck a deal for the release of his brother, Hannibal, who has been jailed in Lebanon for six years.
Seif al-Islam's lawyer, Khaled al-Zaidi, denied the claims of the deal that were reported by France’s Jeune Afrique.
The report is baseless, he stressed.
The report had quoted an aide to Seif al-Islam, Suha al-Badri, as saying that Hannibal’s release was imminent after a bail of $150,000 was paid to Lebanese authorities.
Zaidi refuted the claim to Libya Press, saying Badri was not part of Seif al-Islam's team and is not even his aide, as alleged in the French report.
“No understanding or deal has been reached to release the abducted Libyan national, Hannibal al-Gaddafi,” he added.
Informed Lebanese sources denied all claims about Hannibal’s imminent release, saying they were misleading and made on the anniversary of the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr and his companions.
Sadr, the founder of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council in Lebanon, went missing during a visit to Libya in August 1987. He has never been found.
Sources concerned with Sadr’s disappearance and the Lebanese judiciary’s probe with Hannibal revealed that negotiations had been launched around two months ago between the lawyers in the two cases, “but they reached a dead end.”
They told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Lebanese party had vowed to release Hannibal in return for “accurate information about the fate of Sadr and his companions.”
Hannibal, however, insisted that only Abdessalam Jalloud, a former Libyan prime minister, knew what happened to Sadr. He added that his late father never even met the cleric, who had departed Libya to Rome where he was never heard of again.
