Saif al-Islam Gaddafi: the prophet of his own doom

When the judge condemned him to death by firing squad, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was not in court. The man who once thought he would rule Libya is being held more than a hundred miles west of Tripoli in the town of Zintan, prisoner of a militia that rejects the authority of those who control the capital. The fate of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s second son has come to symbolise a revolution that erupted in 2011 with cries for justice and freedom, but has collapsed into feuding and violence.

Saif al-Islam predicted it himself in a notorious TV broadcast as the uprising against his father’s regime gathered pace in February 2011. “There will be civil war in Libya … We will kill one another in the streets,” he said, wagging his finger at the camera. “All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country, because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and everybody will want to run the country.”

It was the finger-wagging that made Libyans so angry, as if they were naughty children and he was the headmaster’s top prefect. The alternative he offered was a continuation of his father’s 42-year rule, with himself as a putative successor, offering reform on his terms.

“Saif’s condescending manner, the way he wrote off the revolution as a conspiracy, made me so angry,” says Nizar al Mhani, a dental surgeon who joined the uprising that day in response.

Yet now, three and a half years on, Saif’s words seem prescient. His tone may have been arrogant and his prescription self-serving, but he understood the potential for revolution to tear Libya apart. Islamic State militants have taken over Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte and murdered dozens of Christians. The terrorists who killed tourists on the beach at Sousse and at the Bardo museum in Tunis are said to have trained in Libya. Other jihadi groups are active in the eastern towns of Derna and Benghazi. The borders are open – there are no police to stop thousands of African migrants crossing the desert and setting sail for Europe from the Libyan shore. Tribes fight each other in south. Local militia control many towns; kidnapping and smuggling are rife. Last September, the elected government was forced to flee to the east from where it vies for power with members of a rival parliament, many of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who hold sway in Tripoli. A UN peace process, aimed at establishing a government of national unity and fresh elections, has failed to attract the support of key power brokers, especially in the capital. 

Earlier this week, a video emerged showing Saif’s younger brother Saadi, who is accused, among other things, of killing a football player while head of Libya’s football federation, apparently being beaten on the soles of his feet in Al Hadba prison in Tripoli, where the other defendants are being held. Prisoners can be heard screaming off camera; he offers to talk and is beaten more.  - Read More at the Guardian

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