Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi

Saif al-Islam Muammar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: سيف الإسلام معمر القذافي, romanized: Saif al-Islām Muʿammar al-Qaḏḏāfī; 25 June 1972 – 3 February 2026) was a Libyan political figure.
He was the second son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his second wife Safia Farkash.

He was a part of his father's inner circle, performing public relations and diplomatic roles on his behalf. He publicly turned down his father's offer of the country's second highest post and held no official government position. According to United States Department of State officials in Tripoli, during his father's reign, he was the second most widely recognized person in Libya, being at times the de facto prime minister, and was mentioned as a possible successor, though he rejected this. An arrest warrant was issued for him on 27 June 2011 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for charges of crimes against humanity against the Libyan people, for killing and persecuting civilians, under Articles 7(1)(a) and 7(1)(h) of the Rome statute. He denied the charges.

Gaddafi was captured in southern Libya by the Zintan militia on 19 November 2011, after the end of the Libyan Civil War, and flown by plane to Zintan. He was sentenced to death on 28 July 2015 by a court in Tripoli for crimes during the civil war, in a widely criticized trial conducted in absentia. He remained in the custody of the de facto independent authorities of Zintan. On 10 June 2017, he was released from prison in Zintan, according to a statement from the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion. Later the same month, his full amnesty was declared by the Tobruk-based government led by Khalifa Haftar. As of December 2019, Gaddafi remained wanted under his ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity. On 14 November, he attempted to register as a candidate in the 2021 Libyan presidential election, but was rejected. This decision was overturned less than a month later, reinstating him as a presidential candidate.

On 3 February 2026, Gaddafi was assassinated at his home by four unknown gunmen who fled the scene.

Early life and career

Gaddafi graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering science from Al Fateh University in Tripoli in 1994. However, another report states that he was an architect. After several countries, including France and Canada, refused to grant him a student visa, Gaddafi earned an MBA from the Imadec business school in Vienna, where he became friends with OPEC official Shukri Ghanem and Austrian far-right politician Jörg Haider. Upon his arrival in Vienna, Gaddafi was granted permission by the Mayor of Vienna and the head of Schönbrunn Zoo to keep his pet tigers at the zoo. According to Simon McDonald, Gaddafi still had a white tiger at his farm near Tripoli in the late 2000s, but the white tiger was later turned into a rug in Gaddafi's majlis.

Gaddafi's paintings made up the bulk of the international Libyan art exhibit, "The Desert is Not Silent" (2002–2005), a show which was supported by a host of international corporations with direct ties to his father's government, among them the ABB Group, Siemens, Petro-Canada, Bombardier, and SNC-Lavalin.

In 2002, Gaddafi sued The Sunday Telegraph for libel over a 1995 article that alleged he had masterminded an international money-laundering conspiracy. The lawsuit was settled after the intervention of Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud with The Sunday Telegraph agreeing to publish an apology and pay a portion of Gaddafi's legal costs.

In 2005, Gaddafi was awarded a "Young Global Leader" title by the World Economic Forum. In January 2011, WEF founder Klaus Schwab personally invited Gaddafi to attend the annual WEF Forum in Davos.

Gaddafi was awarded a PhD degree in 2008 from the London School of Economics, where he attended amid a series of contacts between the school and the Libyan political establishment. He presented a thesis on "The role of civil society in the democratisation of global governance institutions: from 'soft power' to collective decision-making?" Examined by Meghnad Desai (London School of Economics) and Anthony McGrew (University of Southampton), among the LSE academics acknowledged in the thesis as directly assisting with it were Nancy Cartwright, David Held and Alex Voorhoeve (the son of former Dutch minister Joris Voorhoeve). Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University was also thanked for having read portions of the manuscript and providing advice and direction. Alongside accusations of plagiarism, allegations abound that Gaddafi's thesis was in many parts ghost-written by consultants from Monitor Group, which earned $3 million per year in fees from Muammar Gaddafi.

Speaking in Sabha on 20 August 2008, Gaddafi said that he would no longer involve himself in state affairs. He noted that he had previously "intervene[d] due to the absence of institutions", but said that he would no longer do so. He dismissed any potential suggestion that this decision was due to disagreement with his father, saying that they were on good terms. He also called for political reforms within the context of the Jamahiriya system and rejected the notion that he could succeed his father, saying that "this is not a farm to inherit".

Gaddafi, who was considered a reformist, had a longstanding rivalry with his hardline brother Mutassim and his influence began to wane after the lifting of international sanctions. In November 2010, Gaddafi's independent newspaper was suspended after it published an article calling for a "final assault" on his father's government. His newspaper also defended his father's former chief of protocol Nuri Mesmari, who had defected to France earlier that month. Some of his allies, including 20 reporters, were arrested.

Diplomacy for extraditing Libyans

Interviewed by French newspaper Le Figaro on 7 December 2007, Gaddafi said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$2.33 billion), Gaddafi replied: "I don't know." Gaddafi led negotiations with Britain for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 conspirator. In August 2009, after Scotland's Cabinet Secretary of Justice Kenny MacAskill ordered Megharahi's release, Gaddafi drafted letters to Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, and Simon McDonald, foreign policy adviser of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, thanking them for their support, which led to accusation of undue political influence in the Megharahi case.

In 2007, Gaddafi met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Tripoli, with whom it is alleged he helped broker an arms deal, including missiles.

In November 2008, Gaddafi made a high-profile visit to the United States where he met with US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. During the meeting, Rice raised the case of Libya's jailed political dissident and democracy activist, Fathi El-Jahmi. In a Forbes article in 2009, Fathi's brother wrote that "for nearly a year, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch hesitated to advocate publicly for Fathi's case, because they feared their case workers might lose access to Libyan visas."

In 2009, Gaddafi welcomed Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East division, into Libya, accompanying her in meeting with many government officials and others during her visit. She wrote of her official visit that "the real impetus for the transformation rests squarely with a quasi-governmental organization, the Qaddafi Foundation for International Charities and Development" chaired by Gaddafi. She praised Gaddafi for establishing the country's two semi-private newspapers, and said "it is impossible to underestimate the importance of the efforts made so far. Let's hope this spring will last."

Death of Saif al-Arab and ICC arrest warrant

On 2 May 2011, Gaddafi and his older half-brother Muhammad were among the 2,000 mourners who attended his younger brother Saif al-Arab's funeral. He was seen touching his younger brother's chest while fighting back tears before leaving the graveside while pumping his fist to the crowd. Saif al-Arab and three of Muammar Gaddafi's grandchildren had been killed by a NATO airstrike on 30 April 2011.

In June 2011, Gaddafi and his father, Muammar Gaddafi, announced that they were willing to hold elections, and that Muammar Gaddafi would step aside if he lost. The younger Gaddafi stated that the elections could be held within three months and transparency would be guaranteed through international observers. NATO and the rebels rejected the offer, and NATO soon resumed their bombardment of Tripoli.

On 27 June 2011, an arrest warrant was issued by the ICC. On 1 July, Gaddafi had an interview with Russia Today, where he denied the ICC's allegations that he, or his father, ordered the killing of civilian protesters. He pointed out that he was not a member of the government or the military, and therefore had no authority to give such orders. According to Gaddafi, he made recorded calls to General Abdul Fatah Younis, who later defected to the rebel forces, requesting him not to use force against protesters, to which Younis responded that the protestors were attacking a military site, where surprised guards fired in self-defence. Younis was later assassinated by his fellow rebels on 28 July, allegedly for secret communication with Gaddafi.

Gaddafi condemned NATO for bombing Libyan civilians, including his family members and their children, under the false pretence that their homes were military bases. He stated that NATO offered to drop the ICC charges against him and his father if they accept a secret deal, an offer they rejected. He thus criticised the ICC as "a fake court" controlled by NATO member states.

On 3 August 2011, Gaddafi gave an interview to the New York Times stating that Libya was becoming more closely aligned to Islamists and would likely resemble Iran or Saudi Arabia. Gaddafi said that his father was working closely with Islamists within the rebellion to splinter the resistance.

Personal life

There are two different stories about his mother's origin. One is that his mother, Safia Farkash, is from a family from the Eastern Libyan Barasa tribe and that she was born in Bayda and was trained as a nurse. The other is that she is of Hungarian descent.

In 2006, the German newspaper Der Spiegel and the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia reported that Gaddafi was romantically linked to Orly Weinerman, an Israeli actress and model, they dated from 2005 to 2011. At the time, Weinerman publicly denied having any contact with Gaddafi, but she has since admitted it, and in September 2012, she asked former British prime minister Tony Blair to intervene in his trial in order to spare his life.

In 2009, a party in Montenegro for his 37th birthday included well-known guests such as Oleg Deripaska, Peter Munk and Prince Albert of Monaco.

In April 2016, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Gaddafi had married in Zintan and had a three-year-old daughter. In his 2021 interview with The New York Times, Gaddafi denied being married and claimed that he was lonely.

He is rumored to have been living in a pied-à-terre near Zintan or further south in the village of Qira, the native village of Abdullah Senussi. His former captor, Ejmi al-Atiri of the Zintan Brigades, provided him with bodyguards, along with the Mashashiya tribe and Russian forces. According to Ejmi al-Atiri, Saif al-Islam developed the hobbies of camping, night rides in the desert, hunting, and reading after his release from prison.

According to The Times in 2017, Gaddafi had access to up to $30 billion.

Death

On 3 February 2026, it was reported that Gaddafi had been shot and killed at his private garden in Zintan by four gunmen, who then fled the scene. The attackers had disabled security cameras at his residence prior to his killing.