Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been killed at age 53 in Zintan, western Libya, on February 3, 2026. Reports confirm he was shot and killed. The circumstances remain unclear amid Libya’s ongoing instability, no group has claimed responsibility.
Once seen as his father’s heir and a potential reformer, Saif studied in the West (London School of Economics), helped negotiate Libya’s WMD abandonment in the 2000s, and handled diplomacy. He headed family-linked charities and initiatives like the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity and Development, invited Western thinkers to Tripoli, spoke at Davos, and mingled with global elites.
But during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, he sided firmly with his father’s brutal crackdown on protesters, warning of civil war and rivers of blood. He faced an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity, was captured, imprisoned for years by a Zintan militia, sentenced to death in absentia (later released under amnesty), and briefly attempted a political comeback by registering for Libya’s stalled 2021 presidential election.
(Culled from Beirut Today)
