Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya's late leader Moammar Gadhafi, was killed in the northern African country, Libyan officials said on Feb. 3.
The 53-year-old was killed in the town Zintan, 136 kilometers southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan's chief prosecutor's office.
The office said in a statement that an initial investigation found that Seif al-Islam was shot to death, but did not provide further details about the circumstances of his killing.
Khaled al-Zaidi, a lawyer for Seif al-Islam, confirmed his death on Facebook, without providing details.
Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, who represented Gadhafi in the U.N.-brokered political dialogue which aimed to resolve Libya’s long-running conflict, also announced the death on Facebook.
Seif al-Islam's political team later released a statement saying that “four masked men” stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination.”
The statement said that he clashed with the assailants, who closed the CCTV cameras at the house “in a desperate attempt to conceal traces of their heinous crimes.”
Born in June 1972 in Tripoli, Seif al-Islam was the second-born son of Gadhafi. He studied for a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and was seen as the reformist face of the Gadhafi regime.
Moammar Gadhafi was toppled in a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011 after more than 40 years in power. He was killed in October 2011 amid the ensuing fighting that would turn into a civil war.
Seif al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan late in 2011 while attempting to flee to neighboring Niger. The fighters released him in June 2017 after one of Libya's rival governments granted him amnesty. He had since lived in Zintan.
