Who Killed Moussa Sadr?

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Tuesday for the Lebanese authorities to release Hannibal Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who has been detained without trial for eight years on "baseless charges," according to the NGO.

Hannibal Gaddafi was arrested in December 2015 by the Lebanese authorities, who charged him with "possession of information related to the disappearance of Imam Moussa Sadr," a Lebanese Shiite leader who went missing in 1978 during an official visit to Libya.

HRW emphasized in a statement that the son of the former Libyan leader was only two years old at the time of the influential cleric's disappearance.

The Lebanese authorities have long implicated Muammar Gaddafi in the disappearance of Imam Sadr and two of his companions, a matter that has strained Lebanese-Libyan relations.

"The apparently arbitrary detention of Hannibal Gaddafi on baseless charges, after eight years of pretrial detention, makes a mockery of the Lebanese judicial system," said Hanan Salah, an HRW official in the region. "It is unlawful to keep someone in pretrial detention for many years simply because they may be associated with someone responsible for wrongdoing," she added.

Following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed during a popular uprising in 2011, Hannibal initially sought refuge in Algeria before moving to Lebanon to be with his wife, a Lebanese model.

According to a judicial source, the Kadhafi case is pending while Lebanese authorities await information about Imam Sadr's disappearance from Libya.

Nabih Berri, the President of the Lebanese Parliament who succeeded Imam Sadr as the leader of the Shiite Amal movement, has accused the Libyan authorities of not cooperating.

The downfall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 plunged Libya into chaos, with two rival administrations, one based in the capital Tripoli and the other in the east of the country, vying for power.