Saif Al Islam Qaddafi, the most prominent son of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, has been killed in the country's western town of Zintan, according to local media and his political team.
He was killed during “direct confrontation” with four gunmen who broke into his home, his office said on Tuesday. Further details were not made public.
Despite not holding an official positions, Saif Al Islam was once seen as the most powerful figure in Libya after his father, who ruled for more than four decades. He shaped policy and mediated high-profile, sensitive diplomatic missions.
Saif Al Islam, 53, had been based in Zintan since 2011, first in captivity and obscurity, and then while launching a presidential bid.
The office of Libya's attorney general on Wednesday said investigators and forensic doctors examined his body on Tuesday and determined that he died from gunshot wounds.
The office added in a statement that it was working to identify suspects and take the steps needed to bring a criminal case.
When a rebellion against his father's rule broke out in 2011, he immediately chose family and clan loyalties over his many friendships to lead a brutal crackdown on rebels, whom he called rats.
After rebels took over the capital Tripoli, Saif Al Islam tried to flee to neighbouring Niger dressed as a Bedouin tribesman.
The Abu Bakr Sadik Brigade militia captured him on a desert road and flew him to the western town of Zintan about a month after his father was hunted down and shot dead by rebels.
Wearing a traditional Libyan robe and turban, he appeared in the southern city of Sabha in 2021 to file his candidacy for the presidential elections.
His candidacy was controversial and opposed by many of those who had suffered at the hands of his father's rule.
He had been wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in 2011. He was disqualified from the race after a Tripoli court sentenced him to death for those same crimes in 2015.
