Former Libyan PM released after being 'kidnapped in Tripoli'

TRIPOLI - 22 August 2017: Former prime minister of Libya has been released after being held for a week by an armed group linked to the country’s UN-backed government, sources said.

Ali Zeidan, 61, had not been seen since the evening of August 13 as he was detained by armed men who accompanied him from a Tripoli hotel, The Telegraph reported.

Zeidan, a diplomat turned human rights lawyer, lived in exile in Geneva for three decades before returning to Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi’s regime in 2011.

He served as prime minister in October 2012 but was forced out over his government’s failure to prevent a North Korean-flagged oil tanker loading oil from a rebel-controlled terminal two years later.