Saif al-Islam, the son of the assassinated dictator Muammar Gaddafi, wants to “restore the lost unity” in Libya after a decade of chaos and does not rule out holding the presidency.
He spoke in a rare interview, which was given to the New York Times in a lavish two-story villa inside a gated association at Zintan in the western North African country.
For years, the mystery had surrounded exactly where a man was wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The 49-year-old, who before 2011 had been seen as his father’s supposed successor, said that politicians over the decade have given the Libyans “nothing but misery”.
“It is time for a return to the past. The country – it is on its knees … There is no money, no security. There is no life here,” Saif al-Islam said in his first appearance in several years.
After four decades in power, Muammar Gaddafi and his relatives were the target of a popular uprising in 2011.
Three of the dictator’s seven sons were killed, but the fate of Saif al-Islam, whose name means “sword of Islam”, was unknown.
He was captured by a Libyan militia in November 2011, days after his father was killed.
Four years later, a court in Tripoli sentenced him in absentia to death for crimes committed during the revolt.
The ICC has repeatedly requested that he be handed over for trial.
Political comeback
Until the interview, Saif al-Islam had not been seen or heard from since June 2014, when he appeared via video link from Zintan during his trial at the Tripoli court.
Saif al-Islam said in the interview that he was a free man who organized a political return, and that his former prisoners “are now my friends”.
He told the newspaper that the militias eventually realized he could be a powerful ally.
In recent years, Libya has been divided between two rival administrations supported by foreign forces and countless militias.
In October, after Turkey’s backed forces from the Tripoli – based National Accord Government (GNA) led the forces of Eastern military strongman Khalifa Haftar, the two camps agreed on a ceasefire in Geneva.
The security situation has slowly improved since then. A preliminary government was agreed in March, and general elections are expected to take place on December 24.
Any possible return of Saif al-Islam to Libyan politics would face obstacles, including his conviction in Tripoli and the ICC for his arrest.
But the British-educated son of Muammar Gaddafi seems fearless, according to the New York Times.
Saif al-Islam said that “he was convinced that these legal issues could be negotiated away if a majority of the Libyan people elect him as their leader”.
The newspaper quoted him as saying: “I have been away from the Libyan people for ten years. You have to come back slowly, slowly. Like a striptease. You have to play a little with their minds.”
When asked if it felt strange to seek refuge in Libyan homes when he was on the run in 2011, he was as enigmatic as some of the views expressed in his late father’s “Green Book”.
“We are like fish, and the Libyan people are like a sea to us,” Saif al-Islam replied.
“Without them we die. That’s where we get support. We hide here. We fight here. We get support from there. The Libyan people are our sea.”
(AFP)
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