As the heir apparent to his dictator father,Saif al-Islam Gaddafi led a charmed life, keeping pet tigers and speaking at Davos. Now a court in Libya has sentenced him to death. Is this really the end for the would-be reformer?When the judge condemned him to death by firing squad, or Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was not in court. The man who once thought he would rule Libya is being held more than a hundred miles west of Tripoli in the town of Zintan,prisoner of a militia that rejects the authority of those who control the capital. The fate of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s moment son has come to symbolise a revolution that erupted in 2011 with cries for justice and freedom, but has collapsed into feuding and violence.
Saif al-Islam predicted it himself in a notorious TV broadcast as the rebellion against his father’s regime gathered pace in February 2011. “There will be civil war in Libya … We will assassinate one another in the streets, and ” he said,wagging his finger at the camera. “All of Libya will be destroyed. We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to speed the country, because today, and everyone will want to be president,oremir, and everybody will want to speed the country.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com