‘They will empty their guns into me…’: Who was Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, reformist who shaped Libya’s policy?

Libya's Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, once seen as the successor to his infamous father, spent years in captivity and relative isolation in a remote mountain town before re-emerging with a presidential campaign that contributed to the collapse of a planned election, according to a report by Reuters.

On Tuesday, his office announced that he had been killed in a “direct confrontation” after four masked gunmen forced their way into his residence. No additional details were released, the report stated.

He played a key role in shaping national policy and was entrusted with delicate, high-level diplomatic efforts. Saif al-Islam spearheaded negotiations for Libya to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and helped broker compensation agreements with the families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, Reuters reported.

Intent on ending Libya’s pariah status(isolation), he reached out to Western countries and promoted an image of himself as a reformer, advocating for a constitution and greater respect for human rights.

Educated at the London School of Economics and fluent in English, he was widely regarded by foreign governments as Libya's most acceptable and Western-friendly representative.

But when protests broke out against Muammar Gaddafi’s decades-long rule in 2011, Saif al-Islam stood by his family and tribal loyalties, severing many of his international ties and playing a key role in a brutal crackdown on rebels, whom he contemptuously referred to as “rats.”

Speaking to Reuters at the time of the revolt, he said: “We fight here in Libya, we die here in Libya.”

He warned that rivers of blood would flow and the government would fight to the last man and woman and bullet.

“All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country,” he said, wagging his finger at the camera in a TV broadcast, as reported by Reuters.

He was captured on a desert highway by the Abu Bakr al-Sadiq Brigade militia and airlifted to the western town of Zintan, roughly a month after his father was tracked down and summarily executed by rebel fighters.

“I'm staying here. They'll empty their guns into me the second I go out there,” he said in comments captured in an audio recording as hundreds of men thronged round an old Libyan air force transport plane.

Saif al-Islam was betrayed to his rebel captors by a Libyan nomad.

He then spent six years in detention in Zintan, a stark contrast to the privileged life he had enjoyed under Gaddafi—one marked by pet tigers, falcon hunting, and mingling with British high society during visits to London, Reuters reported.

Human Rights Watch met him in Zintan. Hanan Salah, its Libya director, told Reuters at that time that he did not allege ill treatment. "We did raise concerns about Gaddafi being held in solitary confinement for most if not all of the time that he had been detained," she said.

Saif al-Islam was missing a tooth and said he had been isolated from the world and that he did not receive visitors.

“He was, however, granted access to a television with satellite channels and some books,” she added.

In 2015, Saif al-Islam was sentenced to death by firing squad by a court in Tripoli for war crimes. He was also wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which issued an arrest warrant against him for "murder and persecution".

Fetouri said Saif al-Islam regularly received visitors, often weekly, to discuss politics and Libya’s condition, and was occasionally given gifts and books.

Wearing a traditional Libyan robe and turban, he appeared in the southern city of Sabha in 2021 to file his candidacy for the presidential elections.

He had been expected to play on nostalgia for Libya's relative stability before the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled his father and ushered in years of chaos and violence.

However, his candidacy was controversial and opposed by many of those who had suffered at the hands of his father's rule. Powerful armed groups that emerged from the rebel factions that rose up in 2011 rejected it outright.

As the election process ground on in late 2021 with no real agreement on the rules, Saif al-Islam's candidacy became one of the main points of contention. He was disqualified because of his 2015 conviction, but when he tried to appeal the ruling, fighters blocked off the court. The ensuing arguments contributed to the collapse of the election process and Libya's return to political stalemate, Reuters reported.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 2021, Saif al-Islam discussed his political strategy. “I've been away from the Libyan people for 10 years,” he said. “You need to come back slowly, slowly. Like a striptease. You need to play with their minds a little.”

“After Saif al-Islam was freed a few years ago, he proved incapable of delivering speeches or producing public statements through the press or social media,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a contributor to Britain's Royal United Services Institute think tank, as reported by Reuters.

“Yet his symbolic significance remained substantial. This symbolic stature constituted one of the main factors preventing the 2021 elections from proceeding.”

“Now that he has been slain, most pro-Gaddafi factions will experience both diminished morale and anger. At the same time, one obstacle to holding elections in Libya has been removed,” Harchaoui said.

(With inputs from Reuters)