Many in Lebanon have blamed the disappearance on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
The mystery of the missing imam remains a burning issue for Shiites in Lebanon, including leaders of the powerful Hezbollah. Framed photos of Al-Sadr adorn the shops and homes of Lebanese Shiites, and the day he was last seen, on Aug. 31, 1978, is annually marked in Lebanon.
The Lebanese Shiite leader had flown to Tripoli for a week of talks with Libyan officials. He was never seen or heard from again, along with his two traveling companions.
Al-Sadr was regarded as a moderate who urged cooperation with other faiths. His biggest success may have been that his preaching for Shiite dignity changed the way the sect’s members thought of themselves in Lebanon.
Most of Al-Sadr’s followers are convinced Qaddafi ordered him killed in a dispute over Libyan payments to Lebanese militias, but the imam’s family argues he could still be alive in a Libyan jail. He would be 83 years old, if alive.
“We appeal to those who will take over in Libya after the collapse of the tyrant to give special attention to this case,” said a statement by Al-Sadr’s family addressed to the rebel leadership.
Now that Qaddafi’s regime appears to be crumbling and rebels have stormed Libyan prisons to release hundreds of prisoners of the regime, the Shiite Hezbollah is telling the rebels that the Lebanese are “looking to you” to locate the imam and his traveling companions.
“We are full of hope that they will be freed by your hands and returned to their families,” the Hezbollah said in a statement issued late Monday.
Since Al-Sadr’s disappearance, Qaddafi’s regime has insisted the cleric and his traveling companions left Tripoli on a flight to Rome and suggested he was a victim of a power struggle among Shiites.
Three years before his disappearance, Al-Sadr founded Amal, the first major militia and a grass-roots Shiite political movement in Lebanon. A member of a clan known for its religious scholars, Al-Sadr is a distant relative of Iraq’s Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, whose militia has fought the US military and its Iraqi allies.
