CAIRO (AP) — Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, was killed in the northern African country, Libyan officials said Tuesday.

The 53-year-old was killed in the town Zintan, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan’s chief prosecutor’s office.

The office said in a statement that an initial investigation found that Seif al-Islam was shot to death, but did not provide further details about the circumstances of his killing.

Khaled al-Zaidi, a lawyer for Seif al-Islam, confirmed his death on Facebook, without providing details.

Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, who represented Gadhafi in the U.N.-brokered political dialogue which aimed to resolve Libya’s long-running conflict, also announced the death on Facebook.

Seif al-Islam’s political team later released a statement saying that “four masked men” stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination.” The statement said that he clashed with the assailants, who closed the CCTV cameras at the house “in a desperate attempt to conceal traces of their heinous crimes.”

Born in June 1972 in Tripoli, Seif al-Islam was the second-born son of the longtime dictator. He studied for a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and was seen as the reformist face of the Gadhafi regime.

Moammar Gadhafi was toppled in a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011 after more than 40 years in power. He was killed in October 2011 amid the ensuing fighting that would turn into a civil war. The country has since plunged into chaos and divided between rival armed groups and militias.

Seif al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan late in 2011 while attempting to flee to neighboring Niger. The fighters released him in June 2017 after one of Libya’s rival governments granted him amnesty. He had since lived in Zintan.

A Libyan court convicted him of inciting violence and murdering protesters and sentenced him to death in absentia in 2015. He was also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising.

In November 2021, Seif al-Islam announced his candidacy in the country’s presidential election in a controversial move that was met with outcry from anti-Gadhafi political forces in western and eastern Libya.

The country’s High National Elections Committee disqualified him, but the election wasn’t held over disputes between rival administrations and armed groups that have ruled Libya since the bloody ouster of Moammar Gadhafi.

Samy Magdy, The Associated Press