Will the newly released images of Imam Musa al-Sadr, which have been analyzed through a face-recognition algorithm, solve the mystery of his disappearance? Or will this new information about the former head of Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shiite Council simply fuel another round of political exploitation, perpetuating the cycle that has recurred for decades? Sadr vanished under extremely dubious and obscure circumstances over forty years ago. Almost all the relevant evidence has since disappeared, and it remains among the most notorious forced disappearances of our time. He had no obvious enemies at the time, but many actors had a lot to gain from his absence: states, Lebanese politicians, and several Shiite clerics who would go on to lead ideological organizations, among them Hezbollah.
The latest finding comes from British journalists seeking answers about Sadr’s disappearance in Libya. They obtained photographs of a corpse discovered in a Libyan hospital morgue, and they were told it might be Sadr. Face-recognition software was used to compare the images to those of Sadr and his relatives. Since it found only a 60 percent match, there remains room to doubt whether this body, frozen for years, was in fact Musa al-Sadr.
The pictures were taken in 2011. In them, we see a corpse that seems like it could be Sadr in a Libyan morgue. One journalist noted: “Only one {corpse} resembled Sadr:” the person is “unusually tall.” However, the face “had barely any identifiable features.” The journalists behind the story explained that they presented the photos to researchers at the University of Bradford who had “developed a unique algorithm called Deep Face Recognition” for analysis.
According to the account given by the Libyan state during Muammar Qaddafi’s reign, Imam Musa al-Sadr left Libya for Rome. His clothes and belongings were indeed found in a hotel room that he and his companions had booked in the Italian capital. However, the Lebanese did not believe this rendering of what happened, insisting that someone else, disguised as the Imam, had left Libya using al-Sadr’s passport.
The problem is that neither side has ever been ready to uncover, or even accept, the truth. Shiite politicians have clung to the narrative that al-Sadr did not die, and that was being transferred from one prison since arriving in Libya. This theory, however, is not plausible: it would mean that Sadr lived to celebrate his hundredth birthday despite his incarceration, and that Libya’s current leaders (Qaddafi’s enemies, not his allies) are hiding him.
Even the Imam’s family maintains that “he is alive and in prison,” as his daughter and sister both insist; they also stress that regional powers are behind his disappearance. Their claims only raise more questions, especially since Qaddafi had no obvious interest in hiding or killing al-Sadr. On the contrary, he was a friend of the regime who had come to Tripoli to attend Qaddafi’s commemoration of the September 1 Revolution.
The disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr is, first and foremost, a humanitarian tragedy; it must not be exploited for political blackmail or gains. Likewise, the detention of Hannibal Qaddafi (who had been accused of being implicated despite having been a toddler when the imam vanished) was a political kidnapping. It is unbecoming of the Lebanese state and judiciary to keep him detained under this pretext, particularly with Hezbollah’s once-terrifying grip over government and judiciary having crumbled.
Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri has been extremely vocal about this mystery. He has long boycotted Libyan authorities, agitated against them, and refused any dialogue with them, even disregarding claims that almost confirmed the death of Sadr and with his two companions. Qaddafi himself, pointing to al-Sadr’s Iranian origins, used to say: “Sadr is Iranian; it is Iran that should seek him.” Indeed, Sadr was born in Iran and only came to Lebanon in 1959.
Speaker Berri has repeatedly stated: “Liberating the Imam and his two companions is a sacred mission. Both as the head of the Amal Movement and as speaker of parliament, I will never stop pursuing this goal. That is, he also continues to believe al-Sadr is alive, even after all these years. This implausible conviction only hinders negotiations or closure.
Beyond the political squabbles and blackmail, the disappearance of Sadr and his companions remains a deeply tragic incident. An impartial Arab-Islamic investigative committee must finally close the case by determining his fate, regardless of whether he is Iranian and not Lebanese, as Qaddafi consistently stressed. What is striking is that Iran itself, despite being the “most entitled” to seek answers- as Qaddafi put it- has never once officially sought answers about what had happened to him.
