Ahmad 
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on the Lebanese authorities to release Hannibal Gaddafi, the son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who has been held in pretrial detention for eight years, saying the charges against him are “fabricated.”
Hannibal Gaddafi was arrested in December 2015 in Lebanon (after being kidnapped from Syria), where he was charged with “withholding information” about the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr and his two companions in Libya in 1978.
In a statement, Human Rights Watch stressed the need for the Lebanese authorities to release Hannibal immediately, considering his detention “unjust.”
Hanan Salah, assistant director of the organization’s Middle East and North Africa division, noted that “the Lebanese authorities must release Hannibal Gaddafi, who has been held in pre-trial detention on trumped-up charges since his arrest in December 2015. “Detention in pre-trial detention makes a mockery of Lebanon’s already weak judicial system.”
“We understand that people want to know what happened to Imam al-Sadr, but it is illegal to keep someone in pretrial detention for many years simply because of their potential association with the person responsible for making the mistake.”
Human Rights Watch noted that it had previously requested Lebanese authorities for detailed information about Gaddafi’s judicial status and health but received no response to its request.
Hannibal Gaddafi was kidnapped in 2015 in Syria, before being transferred to Lebanon and arrested there, and is said to have been tortured by unknown gunmen. Hannibal, who was living in Syria after fleeing Libya following the 2011 revolution, was sentenced in Lebanon in 2018 to 15 months in prison for “insulting” the Lebanese judiciary, in addition to a one-year travel ban.