Gaddafi’s heir runs for Libya’s presidency despite arrest warrant

The 49-year-old was registered as a candidate in the December 24 presidential election, the divided country’s election authority has confirmed. Footage showing Gaddafi Jr. presenting paperwork was published by local media at an election center in the southwestern city assembly on Sunday.

He wore a traditional Bedouin robe and turban, not unlike his late father, when he was emphasizing their tribal ties. He also had a long white beard.

December’s vote is the latest attempt to reconcile the North African nation, which remains deeply fractured and impoverished after a decade of NATO bombing campaigns helping anti-government forces topple and kill Muammar Gaddafi.

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If voting goes according to plan, Saif al-Islam will contest against candidates from different factions. These include former-based military commander Khalifa Haftar, Abdul Hamid Dabibeh, prime minister of the United Nations-recognized national unity government in the capital Tripoli, and Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the Tobruk-based parliament.

Saif al-Islam will run as a member of a group of his father’s loyalists, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya, which was formally established in 2016. He is expected to appeal to those indifferent to the economic prosperity and stability that marked his father’s long authoritarian rule in Libya.

International players are backing the bid for the vote. On Friday, he brought stakeholders together at a conference in Paris and secured his pledge to support the outcome of the election. There is still no consensus on the rules under which it is to be held.

Saif al-Islam spent much of the past decade in obscurity, partly because he had spent many years in captivity in the northwestern city of Zintan. In 2015, self-proclaimed officers in Tripoli tried in his absence and sentenced him to death for alleged crimes committed during the 2011 war, but the Xintan militia refused to hand him over for execution. He was reportedly freed in 2017.

Also complicating his bid for the presidency is a permanent warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague over his role in the 2011 war.

Gaddafi’s UK-educated descendant, regarded by many in the West as a better future ruler of Libya, sided with his father strongly when Western-backed rebels took up arms against his rule.

ICC spokesman Fadi Al Abdullah was quoted as saying that the court “Does not comment on any political matter,” Confirming the legal status of Saif al-Islam in the eyes of the ICC, in response to Sunday’s news “has not changed.”

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