{"id":566964,"date":"2026-02-05T01:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T01:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/566964\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T01:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T01:35:17","slug":"killing-of-saif-gaddafi-removes-alternative-to-libyas-rival-governments-muammar-gaddafi-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/566964\/","title":{"rendered":"Killing of Saif Gaddafi removes alternative to Libya\u2019s rival governments | Muammar Gaddafi News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The killing of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi<\/a>, the most prominent surviving son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, removes a figure who commanded symbolic influence among some Libyans, even as he was reviled by others as the representative of a hated regime.<\/p>\n

The 53-year-old<\/a>, killed on Tuesday in the western Libyan town of Zintan, was an alternative to the country\u2019s current power duopoly, split between the United Nations-recognised government in the capital, Tripoli, and the so-called Libyan National Army in the east of the country.<\/p>\n

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The killing occurred less than a week after a reported January 28 meeting at Paris\u2019s Elysee Palace brought together Saddam Haftar, son of eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar, and advisers to Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.<\/p>\n

Then, on Sunday, a meeting brokered by the United States in Paris brought together senior officials from the two rival Libyan administrations to discuss efforts towards national unity.<\/p>\n

However, the manner of Gaddafi\u2019s death \u2013 his political team said that four masked men had stormed his house and shot him<\/a> \u2013 has once again highlighted the insecurity Libya still faces, and the murky nature of the country\u2019s political divides.<\/p>\n

Saif al-Islam as heir to Gaddafi<\/p>\n

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi had some influence in Libya despite having no notable military force under his command, and no control over territory, unlike his rivals.<\/p>\n

He was once seen as his father\u2019s Western-friendly, reform-minded heir before he dropped that image dramatically during the 2011 revolution to help lead a brutal crackdown on protesters. In a televised speech at the time, he denounced the protesters and endorsed his father\u2019s crackdown, threatening \u201crivers of blood\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat speech during the protests marked the end of Saif the reformer and the birth of Saif the son of [Muammar] Gaddafi,\u201d Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

After rebels captured Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in 2011, he spent six years held in Zintan by a local militia. Emadeddin Badi, a senior fellow at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime and Libya expert, said that his captors eventually became more sympathetic to him \u201cand were acting as his bodyguards\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was not a captive in the traditional sense whatsoever and even had a social life there, married with kids,\u201d Badi said.<\/p>\n

After his release in 2017, Gaddafi kept such a low profile that many speculated he might be dead. He resurfaced publicly with a New York Times interview in 2021, where he hinted at a political comeback, and later moved to pursue presidential ambitions.<\/p>\n

When he registered to run for president in 2021, it became a major controversy that contributed<\/a> to the collapse of the entire electoral process.<\/p>\n

Saif al-Islam was disqualified because of an earlier war crimes conviction, but the disputes around his candidacy contributed to derailing the vote.<\/p>\n

Still, he retained support among some groups who, amid Libya\u2019s descent into civil war and rival fiefdoms, were nostalgic for the perceived stability of the Gaddafi era.<\/p>\n

His father, Muammar Gaddafi, came to power in 1969, amid a wave of coups in the Arab world along a crescent from South Yemen, through Somalia and Sudan that year.<\/p>\n

Gaddafi presided over a regime, which, although dictatorial, saw a period of economic growth in the country, fuelled by Libya\u2019s oil reserves.<\/p>\n

The regime was also known for mass human-rights abuses, including the execution of political opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaif al-Islam is popular among Gaddafi-era nostalgists and among those who saw him as that reformist candidate promising change,\u201d Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

His real power wasn\u2019t military but symbolic, El Gomati said. That ideological disposition is referred to locally as the Greens, after the elder Gaddafi\u2019s \u201cGreen Book\u201d outlining his political theories.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaif didn\u2019t really control forces, or territory, but controlled an important narrative and represented something for people who were nostalgic for the days of Gaddafi\u2019s rule,\u201d El Gomati said.<\/p>\n

What impact does this have in Libya?<\/p>\n

Saif al\u2011Islam\u2019s death is likely to matter most in eastern Libya, because of the overlap between the supporters of the man who controls that region, military commander Khalifa Haftar, and Gaddafi\u2019s base.<\/p>\n

Despite that overlap, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Khalifa Haftar deeply distrusted each other, mainly because Haftar had defected from the Gaddafi regime decades ago, and attempted a rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi after having initially helped him come to power.<\/p>\n

Tensions between Khalifa Haftar and Saif al-Islam Gaddafi flared in 2021 when Haftar-aligned militias blocked a court hearing on the latter\u2019s election appeal after he was blocked, withdrawing only after demonstrations by his supporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the Gaddafi family] considered him [Khalifa Haftar] a traitor for rebelling against the Gaddafi regime, and it was thought Haftar was trying to replicate the system their father had built,\u201d Gazzini said. \u201cHaftar had always feared the popularity Saif had.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that meant that Khalifa Haftar was attempting to fill a space left by Muammar Gaddafi, but one that Saif al-Islam was still trying to occupy himself. In effect, that made Saif al-Islam a threat to Haftar, as they were competing over the same constituency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe immediate beneficiary [of the killing] is Haftar,\u201d said El Gomati. \u201cSaif represents an alternative to the authoritarian model which Haftar built.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his symbolic importance, analysts still expect the immediate fallout from Saif al-Islam\u2019s assassination to be limited.<\/p>\n

The people who once supported the Gaddafi regime have split apart dramatically since 2011, with many former loyalists now working within the competing eastern and western power structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis stirs waters, but won\u2019t hit Libya with a storm,\u201d Gazzini told Al Jazeera, noting that while Saif al-Islam Gaddafi\u2019s death is significant, Libya\u2019s basic political deadlock isn\u2019t likely to change a great deal after the killing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis death eliminates Libya\u2019s last viable spoiler to the current power duopoly,\u201d El Gomati said. \u201cHis assassination closes Libya\u2019s last exit from this divided power system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The killing of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the most prominent surviving son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, removes…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":566965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[7575,3097,246171,50,103],"class_list":["post-566964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-libya","tag-middle-east","tag-muammar-gaddafi","tag-news","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116015459447611326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}