Saif al-Islam Gaddafi obituary

"Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who has died aged 53, shot dead by four masked assailants at his home, was for many years considered the heir apparent to his father Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's long-time dictator, and was still a potential force in his country's fractured and violent politics. He was issued with an arrest warrant by the international criminal court in 2011 and convicted in absentia by a Libyan court in 2015 over war crimes committed during the 2011 revolution."

"Saif's career can be roughly divided into three phases: first, that of a wealthy, well-educated including controversially, as it would turn out, at the London School of Economics and jet-setting English (and German) speaker who for a time kept two tigers as pets. With many western businessmen and politicians, including Peter Mandelson, then a cabinet minister, he was an interlocutor who had shown both at home, where he pursued a number of humanitarian initiatives, and abroad an eagerness to democratise the Libyan state."

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was killed aged 53 by four masked assailants at his home in Zintan. He had been regarded as his father's heir and remained a potential force in Libya's fractured politics. An arrest warrant was issued by the international criminal court in 2011 and a Libyan court convicted him in absentia in 2015 over war crimes from the 2011 revolution. He vowed the regime would fight rebels "until the last man standing, even the last woman standing." Captured while fleeing after his father's death, he largely stayed in Zintan. In 2021 he announced a presidential bid backed by the Gaddafist Popular Front, appealing to Libyans frustrated by insecurity, economic collapse and partition. His early image combined wealth, Western education, multilingualism, Western contacts and humanitarian initiatives, but that reformist reputation unraveled during the 2011 uprising.

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