Revered Lebanese spiritual leader Moussa al-Sadr, who went missing in Libya in 1978, died in the prison that he was detained at, al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The report said that al-Sadr died of natural causes in the summer of 1998, while he was detained at Libya’s capital central prison in an underground cell.
A source in the National Transitional Council in Libya told the newspaper that al-Sadr’s body was preserved in a fridge at the prison based on orders made by slain dictator Moammar Gadhafi or by his assistants.
The preliminary investigations indicate that the body of al-Sadr remained in the fridge for almost 12 years until the first days of the revolt against Gadhafi.
“Gadhafi and the prison warden wanted to hide the traces of the crime that the former regime had denied (of committing) for more than thirty years,” the source told al-Liwaa.
It said that the body of al-Sadr might be buried in a mass grave in one of Tripoli’s suburbs.
Asked about the fate of al-Sadr’s companions, the source said that they haven’t found any trace of them.
In 1978, al-Sadr and his companions flew to Tripoli for a week of talks with Libyan officials. They were never seen or heard from again. The day he was last seen, on Aug. 31, 1978, is still marked annually in Lebanon.
At the time, Gadhafi’s regime insisted al-Sadr and his aides left on a flight to Rome at the end of their visit and suggested the imam fell victim to an inter-Shiite power struggle.
No comments:
Post a Comment