A judge on Friday ordered the release on bail of Hannibal Kadhafi, son of longtime Libyan ruler Moamer Kadhafi, after nearly a decade of pre-trial detention in Lebanon, a judicial official said.

After questioning Kadhafi, the judge ordered his release “on $11 million bail and banned him from travel”, the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Lebanese authorities arrested Kadhafi in 2015 and accused him of withholding information about the disappearance of Lebanese Shiite cleric Mussa Sadr nearly four decades earlier, when Kadhafi was a child.

Lawyer Laurent Bayon told AFP that “release on bail is totally unacceptable in a case of arbitrary detention. We will challenge the bail.”

He noted that his client “is under international sanctions” and could not pay such a sum.

“Where do you want him to find $11 million?” he added.

Sadr — the founder of the Amal movement, now an ally of militant group Hezbollah — went missing in 1978 during an official visit to Libya, along with an aide and a journalist.

Beirut blamed the disappearances on Moamer Kadhafi, who was overthrown and killed in a 2011 uprising, and ties between the two countries have been strained ever since.

Married to a Lebanese model, Hannibal Kadhafi had fled to Syria. He was kidnapped in December 2015 by armed men who took him to Lebanon, where authorities ultimately arrested him.

In August, Human Rights Watch urged Lebanon to immediately release Kadhafi, saying it had wrongly imprisoned him on “apparently unsubstantiated allegations that he was withholding information” about Sadr.

This month, Bayon had raised the alarm about his health and called for his release after Kadhafi, who he said suffers from severe depression, was hospitalised for abdominal pain.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who succeeded Sadr at the head of the Amal movement, has accused Libya’s new authorities of not cooperating on the issue of Sadr’s disappearance, an accusation Libya denies. -AFP

Source; Vanguard News