Hannibal al-Gaddafi, son of late Libyan president Muammar al-Gaddafi, is suffering through deteriorating health conditions as the result of a hunger-strike he began two weeks ago to protest his detention without charge in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
According to his lawyer, Paul Romanos, Gaddafi is drinking only small amounts of water, and is suffering from fatigue and muscle pains.
A doctor has been giving him daily checkups due to back pain, which turned out to be caused by an inflammation in the spine., Romanos added.
“Despite his ailing condition, Hannibal Gaddafi’s resolute determination is what keeps him going,” the lawyer said, adding that “Had it not been for his solid will, he would not have been able to continue.”
Gaddafi is being held in a small room and is deprived of freedom of movement or the ability to exercise, Romanos had said earlier this month. Gaddafi began his hunger strike in the first few days of June.
The son of the deceased Libyan leader had been living as a political refugee in Syria.
In 2015, he was kidnapped by Lebanese militants who had illegally crossed into Syria, demanding information on the disappearance of Musa al-Sadr, prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric and founder of the Amal Movement, in Libya 45 years earlier.
According to his own testimonies, Hannibal was tortured and beaten with the aim of extracting information from him regarding Sadr’s disappearance, which took place when he was 2-years-old.
The kidnapping was brief. Not long afterward, he was found by Lebanese authorities in Lebanon’s northern Bekaa Valley and has been detained without charge since. Despite the lack of charges, Gaddafi is still being accused by the Lebanese state of concealing information on Sadr’s disappearance.
Following the kidnapping in 2015, former Amal Movement MP Hassan Yaqoub was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and was detained. Yaqoub was released on bail the following year. He is the son of Sheikh Mohammed Yaqoub, who disappeared alongside Sadr in 1978.
Gaddafi’s detainment in Lebanon has been described as unjust and politically motivated, given that the sentence for the crime of withholding information is much less than the number of years that Gaddafi has been detained in Lebanon.
The Cradle
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