Libya Group Threatens to Kidnap Lebanon Envoy to Press for Hannibal Release

A Libyan armed group has threatened to kidnap Lebanon's ambassador to Libya, the embassy staff and any Lebanese citizen there if Lebanese authorities do not release Hannibal Moammar Gadhafi from prison.

The group, identifying itself as Battalion 74 of the Armed Libyan Resistance Movement, stressed in a YouTube video that Hannibal was “arbitrarily and unjustly detained by Lebanese politicians.”

“Your judicial and legal officials have verified his full innocence,” the group added, addressing Lebanese authorities.

“You know very well that the Libyan leadership under the leader Moammar Gadhafi had nothing to do with the case of the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr,” it said.

The Lebanese judiciary issued an arrest warrant for Hannibal Gadhafi on December 14, days after he was handed over to Lebanese security forces after a brief abduction at the hands of an armed group.

Examining Magistrate Zaher Hamadeh charged Hannibal with “withholding information linked to the case of Imam Moussa al-Sadr.” A lawsuit was also filed against Hannibal on December 14 by the lawyer of al-Sadr's family.

During interrogation, Hannibal "confessed that the Libyan regime was involved in the abduction of Imam al-Sadr, naming the person who impersonated the imam and traveled to Rome" in 1978, according to LBCI television.

He noted that "the sources of his information were his brother Seif al-Islam and intelligence official Al-Mutassem Billah," LBCI has reported.

Al-Jadeed TV has quoted Hannibal as telling a judge that al-Sadr "was detained in a house in (Libya's) Tripoli" and that "he had never left for Rome."

"My father blamed (former Libyan premier) Abdul Salam Jalloud in the case of al-Sadr's disappearance," he told the judge, according to al-Jadeed. The TV network said Hannibal told the judge that his brother Mutassem, who was killed during Libya's uprising, "had information about Imam al-Sadr."

"The man who impersonated the imam and wore his clothes to travel to Rome is a well-known figure who currently lives in an Arab country," Hannibal added, according to al-Jadeed.

The 40-year-old son of slain Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had appeared in a video in which he announced that he had been kidnapped in Lebanon and that his captors are "loyal to the cause of Imam Moussa al-Sadr," the founder of Lebanon's AMAL Movement who disappeared while on a trip to Libya in 1978.

Hannibal was kidnapped in a Syrian area near the Lebanese border on December 11 before being smuggled into Lebanon's Bekaa region. He was handed over hours later to Lebanese security forces.

A security source told AFP that investigators discovered that ex-MP Hassan Yaaqoub had orchestrated an elaborate scheme to seize Gadhafi from Syria and bring him to Lebanon. Yaaqoub was arrested after several days on charges of involvement in Hannibal's abduction, and is still in prison.

Yaaqoub is the son of Sheikh Mohammed Yaaqoub – one of two companions who disappeared with al-Sadr in Libya in 1978. Al-Sadr visited Libya upon the invitation of then Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi – Hannibal's father.

The imam and his companions were seen lastly on August 31, 1978. They were never heard from again.

The Lebanese judiciary had indicted Moammar Gadhafi in 2008 over al-Sadr's disappearance, although the Gadhafi regime had consistently denied responsibility, claiming that the imam and his companions had left Libya for Italy.

Y.R.