According to Libyan prosecutors, they are looking into the murder of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the long-time leader of this country, Col Muammar Gaddafi.

The assassination of the 53-year-old, who was once traditionally viewed as the heir of his father, took place in a “direct clash” with four unknown gunmen who stormed into his home in the city of Zintan, according to an announcement made by his office.

“One of the victims was shot dead,” Libyan prosecutors said on 4th February, “and they were in the process of trying to find who had shot him.”

In another account of the same, his sister informed Libyan TV that he had been killed towards the border with Algeria.

The lawyer of Saif al-Islam reported an assassination attempt on his home in Zintan city by a four-man commando unit, though it was not clear who might have done it (APF news agency).

The office of the public prosecutor reported that forensic investigators were sent to the town of Zintan in north-west Libya to investigate.

Saif al-Islam was reputed to be the most influential and feared leader in the country since his father, who governed Libya between 1969 and 2011, was overthrown and murdered in an uprising.

John Simpson, a BBC World Affairs editor who met Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, stated that he was a mercurial and strange man, but less eccentric than his father.

Simpson said, “in the revolution of 2011, he had accepted being interviewed by the BBC, when he shouted insults at me in the presence of his officials.”

“Then he sent them away and carried on with his apology. They expect it of me,” he said.

Libyan journalist and writer Abdulkader Assad was quoted as saying that Saif al-Islam could have been a target of locals who believed their political presence was being threatened by his popularity.

Abdulkader said in the Newsday programme of the BBC that it might have been an act of foreign actors to get him out due to his controversial past.

He was born in 1972 and was instrumental in the rapprochement of Libya and the West in 2000, up to the fall of Gaddafi’s rule.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of his who had been accused of playing a central role in the gruesome crackdown of anti-government demonstrations, was then imprisoned by another militia in the city of Zintan to serve nearly six years.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) wished to indict Saif al-Islam Gaddafi on the crimes against humanity on account of the alleged role in the repression of opposition protests in 2011.

Fireman received a death sentence in absentia in 2015 in Tripoli, in the west of the country, where the government is supported by the UN.

He was freed on an amnesty law by the militia in Tobruk, in the east, two years later.

At Zintan, Simpson was put on trial.

He said that when he met me in the courtroom, he was relieved that someone had come to film him, perhaps under the hope that it would spare his life.

“But he trusted much in his powers of negotiation and to his personal charm, and he was able to prevail on his captors, who at length released him.”

“But the hatred that many Libyans experienced over his father was transferred to himself, and probably led to his death.”

After the toppling of Gaddafi, Libya has been divided into two groups under the control of different militias and is now fragmented into two conflicting governments.

Under the rule of his father, he influenced policy and spearheaded high-profile negotiations, despite having no real position in government, which resulted in his father abandoning his nuclear weapons programme.

There were international sanctions removed on the North African nation through such agreements, and some viewed Gaddafi as a reformist and the acceptability of a new Libya.m

Gaddafi had never claimed that he was interested in assuming power upon the death of his father, indicating that his father bequeathed him not with power but with a farm.

In 2021, however, he declared that he was going to run for the presidency in elections that were later indefinitely postponed.