A judge on Friday ordered the release on bail of Hannibal Gaddafi, son of long-time Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, after nearly a decade of pre-trial detention in Lebanon, a judicial official said.
After questioning Gaddafi, the judge ordered his release 鈥榦n $11 million bail and banned him from travel鈥�, the official said.
Lebanese authorities arrested Gaddafi in 2015 and accused him of withholding information about the disappearance of Lebanese Shia cleric Mussa Sadr nearly four decades earlier, when Gaddafi was a child.
Lawyer Laurent Bayon said that 鈥榬elease on bail is totally unacceptable in a case of arbitrary detention. We will challenge the bail.鈥�
He noted that his client 鈥榠s under international sanctions鈥� and could not pay such a sum.
鈥榃here do you want him to find $11 million?鈥� he added.
Sadr 鈥� the founder of the Amal movement, now an ally of militant group Hezbollah 鈥� went missing in 1978 during an official visit to Libya, along with an aide and a journalist.
Beirut blamed the disappearances on Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown and killed in a 2011 uprising, and ties between the two countries have been strained ever since.
Married to a Lebanese model, Hannibal Gaddafi had fled to Syria. He was kidnapped in December 2015 by armed men who took him to Lebanon, where authorities ultimately arrested him.
In August, Human Rights Watch urged Lebanon to immediately release Gaddafi, saying it had wrongly imprisoned him on 鈥榓pparently unsubstantiated allegations that he was withholding information鈥� about Sadr.
This month, Bayon had raised the alarm about his health and called for his release after Gaddafi, who he said suffers from severe depression, was hospitalised for abdominal pain.
Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who succeeded Sadr at the head of the Amal movement, has accused Libya鈥檚 new authorities of not cooperating on the issue of Sadr鈥檚 disappearance, an accusation Libya denies.
