Two days ago, on 20 October, Gaddafi’s supporters marked the fifteenth anniversary of his death. Killed and hurriedly buried in a secret grave whose location remains unknown to all but those who buried him, Gaddafi seems to have left behind a secret that the current order fears to reveal, as if his grave itself were a threat to the country’s disorder. Many Libyans believe that Gaddafi went to his grave taking the country with him.

Denied the opportunity to give Gaddafi a proper public funeral, those who gathered for Saif al-Islam’s funeral came to mourn the son and, through him, the father. Killed in February this year, Saif left behind another unresolved question of political violence and accountability. Libya’s Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had identified suspects and issued arrest warrants, but eight months later, nobody has been brought to court. The deaths of father and son remain bound together by a question Libya has yet to answer: can the new Libya finally move beyond the Gaddafis, or will their deaths and unresolved legacies continue to shape its future?

Fifteen years after Muammar Gaddafi’s murder in Sirte and months after his son Saif al-Islam met a similar fate, Libya remains trapped in a paralysis born of unaddressed violence. The refusal to establish transparency in either death—whether through an undisclosed desert grave or delayed justice—reflects a political class terrified of confronting its own foundations. By treating accountability as a privilege reserved for victors, successive authorities have made impunity the primary currency of Libyan governance.

The failure to establish the truth behind these deaths is not merely a legal oversight; it is a cornerstone of a divided state where power is maintained through silence and fear of what the truth might reveal.

The failure to establish the truth behind these deaths is not merely a legal oversight; it is a cornerstone of a divided state where power is maintained through silence and fear of what........

© Middle East Monitor