Ten years after Muammar Gaddafi’s death, Libya is still roiled by political instability following a decade of bloodshed. The enduring chaos has fostered a form of nostalgia for the Gaddafi era, with some Libyans even considering the prospect of seeing his son Saif al-Islam in power one day.
Gaddafi, who was as whimsical as he was cruel and who ruled Libya for 42 years, was captured by insurgents on October 20, 2011, and then pronounced dead in his home town in circumstances that remain unclear.
Three of his sons – Mutassim, Khamis and Saif al-Arab – were also killed during the 2011 conflict.
However, the best known of Gaddafi’s offspring, Saif al-Islam, implicitly endorsed by his father to succeed him one day and viewed in the West as a reformer able to democratise and liberalise the country, is still alive.
Captured in November 2011 by an armed group in Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, Saif al-Islam was sentenced to death in absentia in Tripoli in 2015 after an expeditious trial. Wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity, he kept a low profile for a long time, even after his release from a prison in Zintan in 2017.
Nostalgia for the Gaddafi years?
However, in July 2021, the 49-year-old broke his silence and gave an interview to the New York Times magazine.
With Libya set to hold a high-stakes presidential election on December 24, Saif al-Islam profited from this media exposure to announce his return to the political arena.
It is not the first time his comeback has been heralded. Back in March 2018, as if to test opinion, the Libyan Popular Front, a party that does not hide its pro-Gaddafi leanings, announced from Tunis that the son of “Africa’s king of kings” would be running for president.
In the NYT interview, Saif al-Islam, sporting a greying beard and dressed in…
Source : france24
