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BEIRUT: Lebanon may reduce or cancel the $11 million bail imposed for the release of Hannibal Qaddafi, son of deposed Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi, his lawyer and a judicial official said Monday.
Lebanese authorities arrested the younger Qaddafi in 2015 and accused him of withholding information about the 1978 disappearance of Lebanese Shiite cleric Mussa Sadr in Libya.
Qaddafi, who is now 49 according to his lawyer, was around two years old at the time of Sadr’s disappearance.
A judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP a Libyan delegation met Lebanese judicial officials and President Joseph Aoun on Monday.
The delegation, he said, presented the judge investigating Sadr’s disappearance with “a copy of the investigations conducted by the Libyan authorities into the Sadr case, as well as transcripts of the interrogations of a number of political and security officials in the regime of ousted president Muammar Qaddafi.”
The official then noted “significant flexibility” from Lebanon in the Hannibal Qaddafi case, “with the $11 million bail to be reduced to the minimum... so that it no longer hinders Hannibal’s release.”
The judge also seemed open to lifting the travel ban imposed on Qaddafi, the official said.
Lawyer Laurent Bayon told AFP that the bail “should be significantly reduced or even canceled.”
According to Bayon, the bail was divided into two parts: “$10 million for the victims and $1 million as an appearance guarantee.”
The judge may decide to retain only the $1 million appearance guarantee, Bayon said, while noting that he nevertheless still aims to have the “unjustified” bail canceled.
Mussa Sadr — the founder of the Amal movement, now an ally of militant group Hezbollah — went missing during an official visit to Libya, along with an aide and a journalist.
Beirut blamed the disappearances on Muammar Qaddafi, who was overthrown and killed decades later in a 2011 uprising.
The official said that “the Lebanese judiciary will review the Libyan file and assess the information it contains to determine whether it helps uncover the fate of Sadr and his companions.”