Gaddafi’s widow files complaint to UN over son’s detention

The widow of former Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi, has filed a complaint to the Geneva-based Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) against the imprisonment of her son, Saadi, despite his acquittal by a Libyan appeals court in a murder case.

The Gaddafi family’s lawyer Khaled Zaidi told the Alarabiya.net that Saadi has been arbitrarily imprisoned for unknown reason although he was acquitted of all charges by the Tripoli Court of Appeals in April.

Zaidi added that Gaddafi’s widow, Safia Farkash, assigned him to file a complaint with the OHCHR.

He also said that Saadi’s health has deteriorated in prison, and that the prison’s medical team affirmed that the late president’s son is suffering from serious medical conditions and needs surgery.

Read: Lebanon bans Gaddafi’s son from leaving the country for a year

Saadi was tried on a charge of murdering the coach of Tripoli’s Al-Ittihad football club, for which which he played.

Last July, the Security Council sanctions committee on Libya lifted the ban that had been imposed on Gaddafi’s widow Safia Farkash.

The committee’s chair, Carl Skau, said at the time that a similar travel ban imposed on Gaddafi’s daughter Aisha will be lifted soon.

Farkash has been living in Egypt since 2014. Prior to that she was living in Algeria, where she had sought refuge in the wake of the fall of Gaddafi’s regime in 2011.