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Pro-Kadafi TV station reportedly confirms death of ex-leader’s son

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REPORTING FROM BEIRUT -- A pro-Kadafi television station broadcasting from Syria has reportedly confirmed the death of one of the ousted Libyan leader’s sons.

Khamis Kadafi, who commanded one of his father’s most feared military brigades, was killed on Aug. 29 in fighting in Tarhouna, 60 miles southeast of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, according to news reports attributed to Damascus-based Arrai television.

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The same station has broadcast taped statements from Moammar Kadafi and interviews with his former spokesman, Musa Ibrahim.

Rebel commanders had previously reported Khamis Kadafi’s death, possibly by a NATO airstrike, but there had been no confirmation from Kadafi loyalists. He was said to be 28.

Reportedly killed with Khamis Kadafi was his cousin, Mohammed Abdullah Sanoussi, son of Moammar Kadafi’s brother-in-law and long-time security chief, Abdullah Sanoussi. Both Moammar Kadafi and his ex-security chief remain fugitives.

Khamis Kadafi and his cousin had been among Libya’s pampered young elite during the latter years of Kadafi’s almost 42-year reign, which ended in August when rebels seized the capital. To be a member of the Kadafi family was akin to being Libyan royalty, enjoying almost limitless wealth, extensive business and educational opportunities, prestigious military commands and other perks.

Khamis Kadafi’s 32nd Brigade was charged with the protection of Tripoli and was said to be the fiercest of Libya’s military units. Yet the city fell in a few days after an internal revolt erupted in the capital on Aug. 20. Rebel units later streamed into the capital from the west and east. Many of Kadafi’s forces put down their guns and refused to fight.

Moammar Kadafi, a one-time officer who came to power in a 1969 coup, generally distrusted military officers who were not blood relations or long-time associates, experts say. So he alloted military commands to Khamis and other sons.

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Human rights activists and members of Libya’s provisional government have accused the 32nd Brigade of executing scores of prisoners in an eleventh-hour stroke of vengeance before abandoning the capital. The brigade’s once-imposing compound on the southern outskirts of Tripoli is now a rubble-strewn ghost base, its thick metal gates blasted open.

Still unknown are the whereabouts of Kadafi and two other sons -- Muatassim, another military commander, and Seif Islam, a Western-educated figure who fashioned himself as a reformer and mingled with elite members of British society while in London.

The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, has issued arrest warrants for Moammar Kadafi, Seif Islam Kadafi and Abdullah Sanoussi for alleged crimes against humanity committed during the regime’s crackdown on protests.

Another son, Saadi Kadafi, a one-time professional soccer player with a taste for fast cars and sleek boats, sought refuge in neighboring Niger.

Two others, Mohammed and Hannibal, fled to Algeria in August along with their sister, Aisha, Moammar Kadafi’s second wife, Safia, and several of the deposed leader’s grandchildren, according to the Algerian government.

And son Seif Arab was reported by the former regime to have been killed in a NATO airstrike in Tripoli on April 30, along with three of the former leader’s grandchildren.

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-- Patrick J. McDonnell

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