Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the 53-year-old son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late leader Muammar Gadhafi, was killed on Tuesday, 3 February 2026, Libyan officials confirmed, in a development that could further unsettle the country’s fragile political landscape.
The Libyan attorney general’s office said Gadhafi was fatally shot in the town of Zintan, about 136 km southwest of capital Tripoli, though authorities have not yet publicly detailed the circumstances surrounding the killing.
His lawyer, Khaled al-Zaidi, announced the death on social media, and a political associate, Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, also confirmed it in a Facebook post. According to a statement from his political team, four masked assailants forced their way into his home and shot him in what they described as a “cowardly and treacherous assassination”, adding that closed-circuit cameras at the residence were disabled during the attack.
Born in June 1972 in Tripoli, Seif al-Islam was once viewed as the potential modernizer of his father’s regime and pursued advanced studies in the United Kingdom, but his legacy remained deeply controversial.
After the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gadhafi, he was captured while trying to flee the country and imprisoned by a militia in Zintan, only to be released in June 2017 under an amnesty granted by a rival Government.
He later sought to re-enter Libya’s tumultuous politics with a 2021 presidential bid, but was disqualified amid disputes that helped stall the election. Convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by a Libyan court in 2015 for exerting violence and killing protesters, he was also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity related to the 2011 conflict.