TRIPOLI // Saadi Qaddafi, the playboy son of dead dictator Muammar Qaddafi turned over by Niger to Libya, had been off the radar since fleeing across the desert in 2011.
On August 21 that year, one day after rebels killed his fallen dictator father and brother Mutassim in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, Saadi said he was ready to give himself up “if my surrender stops the spilling of blood”.
Instead he escaped south across the Sahara to Niger more than two weeks after his mother and three other siblings sought refuge in Algeria to the west.
His mother, Safiya, two brothers, Mohammed and Hannibal, and sister Aisha escaped on August 29.
Saadi faces several charges of “crimes to keep his father in power”, according to a spokesman for Libya’s attorney general, including murder and seizing goods by force and intimidation.
Born in 1973, Saadi was Qaddafi’s third son and unsuccessfully tried a career in Italian football before heading an elite unit in the Libyan army.
In the initial weeks of the uprising, he was optimistic that his father would remain in power.
“My father would stay as the big father who advises,” Saadi told Britain’s Financial Times in February 2011.
“After this positive earthquake, we have to do something for Libya,” he said. “We have to bring in new blood to govern our country.”
Saadi devoted part of his life to football as captain of the national team and president of the Libyan Football Association.
When he was 20, he trained with Italian clubs Juventus and Lazio. He remained a shareholder in Juventus by virtue of being the chairman of Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company, which held 7.5 per cent shares in the legendary club that were later frozen.
He also tried to buy Lazio in 2002 after the collapse of the Cirio food empire, which owned the club.
Too big, too slow and not strong enough technically, Saadi was not at the level required for Italian first-class football but was nevertheless recruited by Perugia in 2003 for marketing reasons.
Despite his first game being a media sensation, he played only once in two seasons.
He had barely kicked a ball before being suspended after testing positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid.
At home in Libya, he made few friends in the national team.
“We felt hindered. He was still the son of the head of the state. He was not on equal footing,” the goalkeeper Samir Abboud said, affirming that Saadi could not even pass the ball.
After rebel forces overran Tripoli in August 2011, family albums dug up from Saadi’s seaside chalet told of Western nightclubs and luxury.
In the photos Saadi appeared to live up to his playboy reputation.
“I am forever grateful and blessed to have met you! May all your dreams in this New Year come true and keep doing what you are doing. It works. You can move mountains,” wrote a New Yorker called Linda, in a dedication to Saadi.
Others showed him with rapper friends, looking the part in a T-shirt and thick chain around his neck, or wearing a black suit and white shirt, circled by sinister-looking men.
After his days as a footballer ended, Saadi made a career in the army, heading an elite military unit.
* Agence France-Presse