Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (in our country it is often accepted to pronounce and write Seif - ed. note) was shot 19 times in his home in the city of Zintan in western Libya, where he lives, after being captured in 2011 by an armed group that released him in 2017.
Four masked men broke into his home after disabling the security cameras. About 90 minutes earlier, the security guards left the area for reasons that are currently unexplained.
After the shooting, the attackers did not run - they left. No gunfight, no pursuit in an attempt to claim responsibility. The perpetrators disappear into the silence that in Libya usually means that the killers have nothing to fear from investigation.
This is according to an analysis by Anas el-Gomati, founder and director general of Libya's first policy think tank, the Sadeq Institute, based in Tripoli, published by Al Jazeera.
Saif al-Islam is the son of Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled Libya for more than four decades before being overthrown and killed during the 2011 revolution. Since 2014, the country has been divided between two rival centers of power. In the west, successive governments in Tripoli, the last of which was led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, have enjoyed recognition by the United Nations (UN). In the east, renegade warlord Khalifa Haftar controls territory through military force, backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russia and Egypt, while a formal government in Benghazi provides civilian cover for the real military rule. Neither side has contested national elections, nor does it intend to.
The mechanics of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s assassination tell a story of their own. This was not violence born of chaos. This was an operation carried out in a short window of time by perpetrators who were aware of his movements and security, as well as the informal rules to which they were subject. People close to him describe the case as an inside job.
Getting to Saif al-Islam required more than just a weapon – access to information about his habits, his security and the multi-layered arrangements that allowed him to hide and stay alive. For years, Saif had lived with a degree of cover, protected by local agreements and sometimes by Russian-linked security support. By the night of the attack, all that protection had been withdrawn, and whoever planned the operation knew it.
Motive alone is not proof, but method and capability narrow the circle.
When the commander of Tripoli’s most powerful armed militia, the Stability Support Apparatus (SSA), Abdelghani al-Kiqli, was killed last year by a rival group, immediate chaos ensued. Armed clashes have closed off large parts of the capital, loud and visible. But now it bears no resemblance to the Zintan operation. Its precision and subsequent silence point to a different kind of player.
Critics and inconvenient figures in Haftar’s circle have often been quietly sidelined. Mahmoud al-Werfali, a senior officer in the Libyan National Army (LNA) who was wanted by the International Criminal Court, was shot in broad daylight in Benghazi in 2021. No serious investigation followed. Others have disappeared in similar ways. These types of operations do not require complete territorial control. They rely on networks, intimidation, and the expectation of impunity.
None of this constitutes proof. Libya rarely offers evidence. Only patterns. But patterns have infrastructure.
The political order built by Muammar Gaddafi did not disappear in 2011. It was dismantled and repurposed purposefully. Khalifa Haftar took the fragments, the tribal patronage systems, the security hierarchy, and the militia economy, and reassembled them around his own family, anchored in power by a Praetorian Guard, the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade, commanded by his son Saddam, the recently appointed deputy commander-in-chief of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army and his father’s most likely successor.
Former supporters of the old regime were not excluded from the new system, but they were never trusted in it. Pro-Gaddafi political figures and commanders were encouraged to return to Haftar’s rule and assimilated after 2014 under strictly defined conditions. Figures like Hassan Zadma, formerly associated with the notorious 32nd Brigade of Saif al-Islam’s brother, Khamis, were accepted for their usefulness but were not integrated into the government as partners. When their presence threatened Haftar's control, they were marginalized or removed.
Saif al-Islam himself was never offered even this conditional inclusion in power. He remained outside the system, tolerated, controlled and monitored - a reminder of the alternative lineage that could never be completely neutralized. His life had been under constant threat since 2017. Saif al-Islam did not represent change - he represented an alternative. The danger we embodied was constructive.
Haftar's coalition is based not on ideology but on patronage, which is not, however, unevenly distributed. Some tribes and armed groups receive more than others. Loyalty is a matter of bargaining, calibrated according to what each faction can extract.
If Haftar dies, those who feel wronged would see the succession process as an opportunity to renegotiate their terms or side with whoever offers a better deal. The only figure with a history and a family name symbolic enough to attract them was Saif al-Islam, heir to the very system that Haftar had reconfigured. He would not dismantle it. He would rule through it with the same logic of patronage and the same authoritarian reflexes. Same system, different family. That made him extremely difficult to adapt.
Forty-eight hours before the assassination, Saddam Haftar met secretly at the Elysee Palace in Paris with Ibrahim Dbeibah, nephew of the prime minister and head of Libya’s national security apparatus. There was no official confirmation. Leaked information suggests a single topic of conversation: whether Libya’s rival camps could form another interim government based on an understanding that would place the LNA officially under state control, divide ministries and institutions between the Haftar and Dbeibah families, and further postpone elections, the likes of which have not been held since 2014.
The discontent with this deepens with each failed transition, each broken election promise, each new interim agreement aimed at leaving the same people in power. The family division agreed in Paris would make the discontent volcanic.
Saif al-Islam didn’t need a platform to capitalize on this. He just had to be on the ballot. In the failed 2021 presidential election, he had a significant lead over Haftar. If the only viable candidates are authoritarian, the regime that opposes the ruling elite wins. It could not be absorbed into such a deal without destabilizing both sides, and it could not be left out without becoming a vehicle for every Libyan’s anger against it.
Five days after the killing of Gaddafi’s son, his tribe buried him in the town of Bani Walid, traditionally associated with his father’s loyalists. They wanted Sirte, the city of Muammar Gaddafi’s tribe, but the authorities would not allow it. Condolences and public mourning were banned. Saif spent a decade being ordered where he could live, who he could see, and when he could speak. His killers decided where he could die. His opponents decided where he could be buried. No one has been arrested. No one ever will be. In Libya, silence after a murder is never a lack of response. It is the answer.