A judge on Friday ordered the release on bail of Hannibal Gaddafi, son of deposed Libyan ruler Moamer Gaddafi, after nearly a decade of pre-trial detention in Lebanon, a judicial official said.

Lebanese authorities arrested Gaddafi in 2015 and accused him of withholding information about the disappearance of Lebanese Shiite cleric Mussa Sadr in Libya in 1978.

Gaddafi, now 49 according to his lawyer, was around two years old at the time of Sadr's disappearance.

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After questioning Gaddafi on Friday, the judge ordered his release "on $11 million bail and banned him from travel", the judicial official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Lawyer Laurent Bayon told AFP that "release on bail is totally unacceptable in a case of arbitrary detention. We will challenge the bail."

He noted that his client "is under international sanctions" and could not pay such a sum, adding: "Where do you want him to find $11 million?"

Sadr -- the founder of the Amal movement, now an ally of militant group Hezbollah -- went missing during an official visit to Libya, along with an aide and a journalist.

Beirut blamed the disappearances on Moamer Gaddafi, who was overthrown and killed in a 2011 uprising, and ties between the two countries have been strained ever since.

Married to Lebanese model Aline Skaf, Hannibal Gaddafi fled to Syria after the start of the Libyan uprising.

He was kidnapped in December 2015 by armed men who took him to Lebanon, where authorities released him from the kidnappers and later detained him.

He has never faced trial.

Health concerns

In August, Human Rights Watch urged Lebanon to immediately release Gaddafi, saying it had wrongly imprisoned him on "apparently unsubstantiated allegations that he was withholding information" about Sadr.

Last week, lawyer Bayon had raised the alarm about his health and called for his release after Gaddafi, who he said suffers from severe depression, was hospitalised for abdominal pain.

His wife lives in Lebanon with their two younger children, who attend school, while the eldest is studying in Europe, a source close to the family said.

Hannibal and Skaf had sparked a diplomatic incident with Switzerland in 2008 when they were arrested in a luxury Geneva hotel for assaulting two former domestic employees.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who succeeded Sadr at the head of the Amal movement, has accused Libya's new authorities of not cooperating on the issue of Sadr's disappearance, an accusation Libya denies.

Hannibal Gaddafi's name also came up in the case of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was sentenced last month to five years in prison over a scheme for Moamer Gaddafi to fund his 2007 presidential run.

French investigations revealed a possible attempt to corrupt Lebanese judges in early 2021 in the hope of releasing Hannibal Gaddafi and obtaining information that would clear Sarkozy's name.

Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key accuser in the Sarkozy case, died in Lebanon last month.

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