Saif al-Islam, 53, Muamar Gaddafi's son, was killed in Zintan where he had been based since 2011.
The 2008 PhD holder from the London School of Economics had in June 2011 announced that his father was willing to hold elections and to step down if he did not win; however, NATO rejected the offer, and the bombardment of Libya continued.
Saif al-Islam's father and brother, Mutassim, were killed in Sirte on October 20, 2011.
On January 30, documents released by the US government included an email to Jeffrey Epstein dated July 2011 describing the huge amount of money to be made off the US-NATO attack on Libya. About $80bn in frozen Libyan funds, including roughly $32.4bn in the US, were available for the taking, with UK's MI6 and Israel's Mossad both willing to assist Epstein and his associate.
The Rise and Fall of the "Reformist"
Saif al-Islam was long viewed as the modernizing face of his father's regime. Educated in Austria and the UK, he spearheaded Libya's diplomatic reintegration with the West in the early 2000s, negotiating the resolution of the Lockerbie bombing compensation and the dismantling of Libya's nuclear weapons program.
During the 2011 'Arab Spring' he warned of "rivers of blood" and a civil war that would consume Libya's oil wealth. Following his father's ouster and death, Saif was captured in the desert and held in Zintan for nearly a decade. Despite being sentenced to death in absentia by a Tripoli court in 2015 and sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, he was eventually released under a general amnesty law in 2017.
In 2014, Seymour M. Hersh published "The Red Line and the Rat Line" exposing the US-NATO war against Libya and Syria, both cloaked in the disguise of 'freedom and democracy' building.
In 2012, President Obama gave his famous "Red Line" speech, promising US military action against the Assad regime in Syria. Washington's intelligence sources knew the armed opposition in Syria had chemical weapon capabilities, but ignored the facts on the ground. Obama chose to not act on his "Red-Line" promise in the end.
The "Rat Line" beginning in 2012 was a CIA operation (Timber Sycamore) in which arms captured by the US in Libya were shipped to the armed opposition in Syria, via a port in Turkey.
Mahdi al-Harati is an Irish-Libyan who commanded the Tripoli Brigade in the US-NATO war on Libya. Later, he followed the CIA weapons transfers to Syria and commanded the Liwaa Al-Umma, an armed opposition group.
In the US and its allies, the Syrian and Libyan armed opposition groups were called 'freedom fighters', but to the unarmed civilians who they targeted they were 'terrorists' and affiliated by Al Qaeda, and later ISIS.
The US-NATO war on Libya was "to protect civilians", and was air support for armed groups fighting Muammar Gaddafi, which included extremists, and led to a post-conflict rise in terrorism.
The anti-Gaddafi coalition was diverse, and included members of extremist Islamic groups and fighters previously associated with al-Qaeda-linked groups.
Following the fall of the Qaddafi regime, the country became a hotbed for terrorist groups and the NATO-backed uprising allowed groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS to establish a foothold in the region.
The Impact on National Reconciliation
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