Lebanon refuses Syria’s request to return Gaddafi’s son

Lebanon’s justice minister says he has refused a request from the Syrian government to return the son of Libya’s late dictator Muammar Gaddafi to Damascus.

Ashraf Rifi said Wednesday that returning Gaddafi to Damascus would violate a 1951 agreement between the two countries.

Lebanese authorities this week arrested Hannibal Gaddafi for questioning over the decades-old disappearance of a Lebanese Shia imam in Libya.

Gaddafi was three years old when Imam Moussa al-Sadr disappeared with two companions during a 1978 official visit to Libya. The unsolved case has figured centrally in the Lebanese Shia community’s narrative of marginalization.

The younger Gaddafi, who reportedly lives in Syria and has kept a low profile after his father’s 2011 overthrow, was kidnapped last week by Lebanese Shia militants, who afterward handed him to authorities.

Source: AP