Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Gaddafi's second son and the dictator's favoured heir, was detained by rebels on Sunday night, according to Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of the rebel National Transitional Council. A spokesman for the International Criminal Court confirmed the arrest by "rebel special forces".
Saif al-Islam, 38, was described as Libya's "de facto prime minister" by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the ICC. He is accused of recruiting the foreign mercenaries which attacked protestors during Libya's six-month uprising.
During the civil war he has acted as his father's official spokesman and, alongside his father and Abdullah al-Senussi, the regime's intelligence chief, was one of three people indicted by the ICC in June.
He studied for an MBA in Vienna in 1997, before controversially being awarded a PhD from the London School of Economics in 2008. Sir Howard Davies, the director of the university, later resigned after it emerged Saif had made a £1.5m donation.
Before the uprising Saif was seen as the voice of reform within the regime. While studying in London in 2003, he was said to have approached MI6 to warn them of his father's weapons of mass destruction and led the discussions to have them dismantled. He was instrumental in winning compensation from Italy, Libya's former colonial ruler. He pushed the awarding of compensation to the victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorist attacks, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie and UTA Flight 772 over Chad.
But he later claimed the deals were only done to get international sanctions lifted and said the families of the dead were "very greedy" who were "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters". He was also involved in the talks to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
It was reported father and son had exchanged angry letters after Saif admitted that six Bulgarian nurses who were imprisoned in Libya and accused of deliberately infecting children with HIV had been tortured with electric shocks.
Mohammed Gaddafi, the Colonel's eldest son, was head of the Libyan Olympic Committee and ran the main state-run telecommunications firm. Early this morning he told Al-Jazeera news he had been detained by rebels and was under house arrest.
"They are besieging my house. Yes, the gunfire is inside my house," he said, before the line was suddenly cut off.
Saadi Gaddafi, 38, a member of his father's inner circle, is understood to have been arrested this morning alongside his brother Saif. Saadi is a former international footballer, commander of the regime's special forces and a businessman who has invested in numerous Hollywood movies. Witnesses claimed he personally ordered his troops to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Benghazi. He was wanted by Interpol along with 15 other regime figures.
Hannibal Gaddafi was last seen fleeing in the direction of the Algerian border alongside his brother Mutassim. The pair were leading the defence of Gharyan, south of Tripoli. Hannibal repeatedly made headlines for his erratic, playboy behaviour: he attacked three Italian policemen with a fire extinguisher in 2001; was detained for drink-driving in his Porsche on the Champs-Elysees in Paris; and was given a four-month suspended prison sentence for beating his girlfriend. His attack on two Swiss staff caused a diplomatic crisis which saw Libyan sanctions against Switzerland. Mutassim is the country's National Security Adviser who met Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State. Described as "not intellectually curious", he commanded Libyan forces in the fierce battles around Brega.
Saif al-Arab Gaddafi was killed in a Nato bombing raid on April 30 while in the same villa as his father. He was once accused of trying to smuggle an assault rifle from Germany to Paris.
Aisha Gaddafi, his daughter, is dubbed the "Claudia Schiffer of North Africa" by the Arab press. She is a lawyer who joined the defence team of Saddam Hussein and helped represent Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad. Her whereabouts are unknown but it was reported yesterday the Colonel had planned to send her and her mother into exile in Tunisia.
Khamis Gaddafi, 28, the dictator's youngest son, leads the feared Khamis Brigade of the Libyan Army. His current whereabouts are unknown but his death during the civil war has been claimed several times. He suffered head injuries aged 3 during the 1986 US bombing of Libya in response to the Berlin discotheque bombing. He was expelled from his MBA course at IE Business School, Madrid, earlier this year, because of his role in the attacks on Libyan protestors. Just before the uprising he spent four weeks in the US as part of an internship with AECOM, a global infrastructure company, and toured US ports and military facilities. The company claimed the US government had approved the plan and offered advice; the State department denied any role in planning or paying for the trip.
Hana Gaddafi, the tyrant's adopted daughter, was reported to have been killed during the 1986 US bombing. But reports emerged this month that she is alive, working as a doctor and regularly travels to London on shopping trips.
Source: The Telegraph
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