Gadaffi video furore in Lebanon

A son of Libya's late leader Moammar Gadaffi was briefly kidnapped in Lebanon by militants demanding information about the fate of a cleric who went missing in Libya decades ago, a security official and local TV stations said Friday.

Hannibal Gadaffi appeared in a video aired late Friday on local Al-Jadeed TV saying anyone with information about Imam Moussa al-Sadr should come forward.

Gadaffi appeared to have been beaten up and had black eyes but said in the video he is "in good health, happy and relaxed."

Later Friday, a senior security official said police collected Gadaffi from the northeastern city of Baalbek where he was being held by the militants, whose affiliation was not immediately known. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Gadaffi was being brought to Beirut.

Al-Sadr's 1978 disappearance has been a long-standing sore point in Lebanon. The imam's family believes he may still be alive in a Libyan prison, though most Lebanese presume al-Sadr is dead. Today he would be 87 years old.

Al-Sadr was the founder of a political and military group that took part in the long Lebanese civil war that began in 1975.

"I am with people who have a cause and they are loyal to their cause," Gadaffi, who is married to a Lebanese woman, said in the video.

Hannibal Gadaffi was arrested in 2008 for allegedly beating up two servants in a Geneva luxury hotel, sparking a diplomatic spat that dragged on for months. In 2005, a French court convicted him of striking a pregnant companion in a Paris hotel. He was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and a small fine.

He fled to Algeria after Tripoli fell, along with his mother and several other relatives.

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