Gaddafi's Son Captured, Video Leaked (Video)
The son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was captured over the weekend while attempting to escape to Niger and new footage has been released of the young Gaddafi in his first hours of seizure.
The 39-year-old son of former strongman Gaddafi was captured looking nothing like the London School of Economics-educated son of Africa’s “former king of kings,” but rather resembled an exhausted middle-aged man that has been on the run in Libya's vast desert for several months.
In the video, an injured Saif al-Islam warns his captures of the threat posed by revolutionary leaders – arguing that within a maximum of one year his captors would realize the "reality" of the new leadership.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
“Please don’t deny the fact that on the day Saif al-Islam was taken prisoner he warned you of all that,” he said.
Gaddafi’s son was captured due to a “hero” tribesman that betrayed the former leader’s son.
Yussef Saleh al-Hotmani said that Saif al-Islam offered to pay him 1 million Euros to drive him across the border.
“I was offered millions but all the money they had would not buy a pebble of our sand or one drop of our martyrs’ blood,” al-Hotmani said at a news conference following the capture.
Saif al-Islam has been at large since August when National Transitional Council forces stormed the Libyan capital of Tripoli and overran the Gaddafi compound.
In the surfaced video, Saif al-Islam explains the wounds he sustained to his bandaged hand saying, “the injury I have is from a month ago near Wadi Zamzam from the infidel crusader pack and thankfully the Libyans didn’t attack us, it was the infidels who attacked us,” he said.
The video of Gaddafi’s son hours after his capture emerges on the same day that International Criminal Court (ICC) representatives arrived in Libya to discuss the trial of Gaddafi’s son for crimes against humanity.
It appears as though Saif al-Islam will be tried in his native Libya, however, the ICC will aid in the trial. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that The Hague would not be seeking extradition for Saif al-Islam.
“In May, we requested an arrest warrant because Libyans could not do justice in Libya. Now, as Libyans… decided to do justice, they could do justice and we’ll help them to do it – that is the system.”
If found guilty for ordering police to shoot unarmed protestors during Libya's version of the Arab Spring movement, Saif al-Islam could face the death penalty.
Watch footage of the captured Saif al-Islam below.
