Lebanese judge orders Hannibal Gaddafi's release: AFP
A Lebanese judge on Friday ordered the release of Hannibal Gaddafi, son of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, on bail after nearly a decade of pre-trial detention in Lebanon, a judicial official said.
After questioning Gaddafi, the judge ordered his release "on $11 million bail and banned him from travel", the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
Lebanese authorities arrested Gaddafi in 2015 and accused him of withholding information about the disappearance of Lebanese Shiite cleric Mussa Sadr nearly four decades earlier.
A lawyer for Hannibal said he would challenge the $11 million bail.
"Release on bail is totally unacceptable in a case of arbitrary detention. We will challenge the bail," lawyer Laurent Bayon told AFP, noting his client "is under international sanctions" and could not pay such a sum.
"Where do you want him to find $11 million?" he added.
Sadr -- the founder of the Amal movement, now an ally of group Hezbollah -- went missing in 1978 during an official visit to Libya, along with an aide and a journalist.
Beirut blamed the disappearances on Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown and killed in a 2011 uprising, and ties between the two countries have been strained ever since.
Married to a Lebanese model, Hannibal Gaddafi had fled to Syria. He was kidnapped in December 2015 by armed men who took him to Lebanon, where authorities ultimately arrested him.
In August, Human Rights Watch urged Lebanon to immediately release Gaddafi, saying it had wrongly imprisoned him on "apparently unsubstantiated allegations that he was withholding information" about Sadr.
This month, Bayon had raised the alarm about his health and called for his release after Gaddafi, who he said suffers from severe depression, was hospitalized for abdominal pain.
Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who succeeded Sadr at the head of the Amal movement, has accused Libya's new authorities of not cooperating on the issue of Sadr's disappearance, an accusation Libya denies.
