The investigator in the case of the disappearance of cleric Imam Moussa al-Sadr and his companions Judge Zaher Hamadeh agreed on Thursday to lower the bail in the release of Hannibal al-Gaddafi, the son of late Libyan leader Moammar al-Gaddafi, paving the way for his release from jail after ten years.
The bail of 11 million dollars will be reduced to 900,000 dollars, and the travel ban against him will be lifted once it is paid.
Hannibal’s release was announced some two weeks ago. Hamadeh decided to reduce the bail after interrogating Hannibal for two hours at the Justice Palace in Beirut in the presence of his lawyers and representatives from Sadr, Abbas Badreddine and Mohammed Yacoub’s families.
This was the first time Hannibal had been reinterrogated since 2017.
His lawyer Nassib Chedid told Asharq Al-Awsat that Sadr’s family had requested it and that it did not offer any new evidence in the case against him.
The Lebanese judiciary had come under international pressure, especially human rights groups, to release Hannibal, who was seen as a “political prisoner”. He was being held for allegedly withholding information in Sadr’s disappearance.
The groups refuted the claims, arguing that Hannibal was only three years old when the cleric went missing and that years later, he never assumed any political, military or security position when his father was in power.
A judicial source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the decision to release Hannibal “was taken after the investigator had exhausted all legal measures, whether in communicating with Libyan authorities or during his last interrogation.”
The investigator concluded that his continued detention was no longer justified after ten years, and that Hamadeh had gathered all possible information in the case, it added.
A Libyan delegation, including government and judicial representatives, had visited Lebanon in recent days to follow up on the case. It met with the official committee on Sadr’s disappearance and Hamadeh.
The ten million dollars removed from Hannibal’s bail were going to be a form of partial compensation for the families of the three missing people in the case.
Sadr’s family eventually demanded compensation of one Lebanese pound, Badreddine’s family did not demand compensation and the Yaacoub family objected to the hefty bail.
Sadr and his two companions went missing during a trip to Libya in 1978.
Gaddafi had been living in exile in Syria with his Lebanese wife, Aline Skaf, and children until he was abducted in 2015 and brought to Lebanon by Lebanese militants who were demanding information about Sadr.
Lebanese police later announced they had seized Hannibal from the northeastern Lebanese city of Baalbek where he was being held, and he has been held ever since in a Beirut jail, where he was faced questioning over Sadr's disappearance.
Libya formally requested Hannibal’s release in 2023, citing his deteriorating health after he went on a hunger strike to protest his detention without trial.
The case has been a long-standing sore point in Lebanon. The cleric’s family believes he may still be alive in a Libyan prison, though most Lebanese presume he is dead. He would be 96 years old.
