Video shows Moammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi being beaten by Libyan prison guards

YouTube screenshotThroughout the nine-minute long video, the 42-year-old sits hunched and blindfolded as he listens to the screams of other detainees being beaten.

He was once a playboy with a soccer career sponsored by his dictator father but now Saadi Gadhafi, the son of Libya’s longtime ruler, Moammar Gadhafi, has appeared in a video documenting prisoner abuse.
Throughout the nine-minute long video, the 42-year-old sits hunched and blindfolded as he listens to the screams of other detainees being beaten. At the end of the film, Gadhafi’s jailers ask him if he would rather be beaten on his feet or on his buttocks.Video after cut.. Warning Graphic content

“What kind of a question is this? My feet,” he responds. His legs are then strapped to a metal contraption, and he, too, is hit. The video, published by news site Clear News, appears to have been filmed inside the al-Hadba corrections facility in the capital, Tripoli.



Libya’s state prosecutor said Tuesday that his office was seeking to identify the guards in the video. Gadhafi escaped Libya in 2011 after the anti-regime uprising that began with mass protests and ended with the lynching of his father. He was placed under house arrest in Niger before being extradited in March last year.
The following month, Libyan state television broadcast a series of videos that showed Gadhafi apparently confessing to crimes, from what appeared to be his jail in Tripoli. He faces many charges, including one relating to the killing of a football player when he headed the Libyan Football Federation.

Gadhafi had a brief and unimpressive footballing career in Italy, largely facilitated by his father’s vast wealth. The undated video showing the abuse of Gadhafi was published a week after his more famous brother, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, was sentenced to death by a firing squad in a trial that international human rights groups say lacked transparency.
Human Rights Watch expressed concerns over the apparent abuse of prisoners and called for measures to be put in place to protect all detainees.

YouTubeAt the end of the film, his jailers ask him if he would rather be beaten on his feet or on his buttocks. "What kind of a question is this? My feet," he responds. His legs are then strapped to a metal contraption, and he, too, is hit.

 

Source-National Post