Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi intends to run for president in the country's 2018 elections, a family spokesman has said. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has prepared a platform and will announce his plans to run soon, a family spokesman, Basem al-Hashimi al-Soul said. The former leader's second oldest son was seen by some as a potential reformist successor to his father in the years before 2011 and remains a key figure for Gaddafi loyalists.
Seeking to rebuild their influence, they present Saif as someone who can help reconcile the country's rival factions, though he was imprisoned for alleged war crimes for five years.
'The platform includes some procedures that Saif al-Islam hopes the United Nations would adopt to help Libya move from the incumbent transitional period to stability,' al-Soul said.
He told Egypt Today: 'Saif al-Islam plans to impose more security and stability in accordance with the Libyan geography and in coordination with all Libyan factions.' Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will run for the upcoming presidential election, which may take place in mid-2018,” he said.
The beginning of the political activities of Saif al-Islam on the territory of Libya became known in mid-October. Gaddafi’s lawyer Khaled Al-Zaidi told Al Arabiya TV that Gaddafi’s son is involved in the life of the Libyan society, maintains contacts with public figures and leaders of the Libyan tribes.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, 44, the eldest son of Muammar Gaddafi from his second marriage, was considered by his father as a probable successor. He is an architect and engineer by training, studied in Austria and the UK.
Saif al-Islam, whose name means sword of Islam lived in a £10m mansion in Hampstead, London (before the 2011 Arab spring) and was awarded a contentious PhD. from the London School of Economics and had impressive connections including with hedge fund investors.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was arrested in November 2011 by a militia from the city of Zintan, when he was travelling by car towards the border with the Niger.
The Appeal Court in Tripoli on July 24, 2015, sentenced him in absentia with the death sentence on charges of “crimes against the Libyan people” committed during the so-called revolution on February 17.
However, the Zintans categorically refused to hand over the prisoner to the capital authorities, who were repeatedly at odds with the fall of the former regime, and in the beginning of June Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was released from Zintan prison.
