Daily Star - Imam Sadr and companions still alive in captivity of Libya, son tells news agency - August 31, 2010

BEIRUT: The son of disappeared Imam Musa Sadr has said his father and his companions is still alive in Libyan jails.

Sadreddine Sadr told the state-run National News Agency (NNA) in an exclusive interview on Monday that his father Sadr, who disappeared during a visit to Libya in 1978, was still alive and being held captive by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

“Imam Sadr, Sheikh Mohammed Yaaqoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine are still alive and are being held captive by Gadhafi,” Sadreddine Sadr told the NNA.

Sadr said that Moammar Gadhafi had claimed that the three men left Tripoli for Rome “but Italian judicial authorities and Lebanese investigations and a lot of other information have proved that they did not leave Libya.”

Sadr said that during the past 24 years Gadhafi had insisted that Sadr and his two companions left for Italy.

But on August 31, 2002, Sadr recalled, Gadhafi admitted that Musa Sadr and his companions “entered Libya upon the invitation of government officials and disappeared there.”

Sadr placed the blame on the Lebanese judicial authorities for negligence in his father’s case.

“I am far from politics, but our duty is to liberate them first so that we can carry on the march,” Sadreddine told NNA. “Second, we have to walk in the footsteps of the imam.”

In the 1960s the Iranian-born imam became one of the most prominent advocates for the Shiite population of Lebanon, a group that was disadvantaged both economically and politically.

In 1969, Sadr was appointed as the first head of the Higher Shiite Council and in 1974 founded the Amal Movement.

The current head of the Amal Movement, Speaker Nabih Berri, is expected to give a speech during a rally in southern coastal city of Tyre on Tuesday to mark the disappearance of Imam Sadr.

In his speech, Speaker Berri will tackle recent developments on the Lebanese scene in addition to any new details about Sadr’s disappearance. – The Daily Star

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