Feared son of Gaddafi clan leader

SAIF al-Islam Gaddafi was the second son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a key figure in Middle East politics.

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He was a part of his father's inner circle, performing public relations and diplomatic roles, although he publicly turned down his father's offer of the country's second highest post and held no official government position.Nevertheless, Saif al-Islam was long seen as the most influential and feared figure in Libya after his father, who ruled the country from 1969 until being ousted and killed during an uprising in 2011.

BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson, who had met Saif al-Islam, said that he was “a strange, mercurial figure, but he was much less eccentric than his father”.