Election Panel Rejects Gaddafi’s Son As Presidential Candidate

Libya’s election commission says Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former ruler and a major candidate in December’s planned presidential election, was ineligible to run, compounding the turmoil surrounding the vote.

Some 98 Libyans registered as candidates but Gaddafi was one of 25 candidates the commission disqualified in an initial decision pending an appeals process that will ultimately be decided by the judiciary.

Disagreements over the election rules, including the legal basis of the vote and who should be eligible to stand, are threatening to unsettle an internationally backed peace process which is meant to end a decade of violent factional chaos.

The commission said Gaddafi was ineligible because he had been convicted of a crime.

Recall that’s a Tripoli court sentenced him to death in absentia in 2015 for war crimes committed during the uprising against his late father Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

He appeared in that trial by videolink from the town of Zintan, where he was being held by fighters who captured him as he tried to escape Libya after his father’s overthrow. He has denied wrongdoing.

Two other well-known candidates, former premier Ali Zeidan and former parliament Nouri Abusahmain, were also excluded.Some of the candidates approved by the commission, including likely frontrunners, have also been accused of possible violations by political rivals.

Interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah vowed not to run for president as a condition of taking on his present role, and did not stand down from it three months before the vote as is required by a contested election law.

Another prominent candidate, eastern commander Khalifa Haftar, is said to have U.S. nationality, which could also rule him out. Many people in western Libya also accuse him of war crimes committed during his 2019-20 assault on Tripoli.