Former Libyan premier and Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem, who abandoned Muammar Gaddafi’s regime to support the rebels, drowned in a section of the Danube river flowing through Vienna, Austria.
...he insisted that Libya bore no responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people
Austrian police spokesman Roman Hahslinger also said that the autopsy results on Mr Ghanem's body show there were no signs of violence.
Mr Hahslinger suggested the death may have been an accident and that Mr Ghanem had complained to his daughter late on Saturday that he was not feeling well. He said no suicide note had been found and there is no evidence Mr Ghanem was under threat.
The police spokesman said the results of toxicological tests are expected later this week as part of the investigation into the drowning.
Mr Ghanem was dressed normally when found in the river but had no personal identification other than a document that named the company he was working for, Mr Hahslinger said.
An employee of the company was subsequently contacted and identified him.
Mr Hahslinger said Mr Ghanem apparently left his Vienna home in the early morning after spending Saturday evening at home with an acquaintance.
Police were alerted by a passer-by who saw his body floating near his home, close to the modernistic building housing United Nations agencies in the Austrian capital.
Mr Ghanem was a former Libyan premier who last served as his country’s oil minister until last year.
He left Libya for Tunisia and then Europe in June as insurgents were pushing to topple Gaddafi and he subsequently announced he would support the rebels.
He was said to be autocratic at home but reporters covering the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries remembered him as a friendly man who readily gave his mobile phone number to selected journalists covering Opec ministerial meetings and gracefully took even late-evening calls.
With advanced degrees in law and economics, Mr Ghanem served in senior positions within the Vienna-based Opec before his appointment as Libyan Prime Minister in June 2003 − an office he held until 2006 when he took the oil ministry portfolio.
Considered a member of Gaddafi’s inner circle until his defection, he insisted that Libya bore no responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.
He also repudiated Libyan responsibility in the 1984 shooting death of WPC Yvonne Fletcher during a protest in front of his country’s embassy – an incident that led to the severing of British-Libyan relations.
Such comments branded him as a loyal servant of the Gaddafi clan. At the same time, he worked quietly from the inside to change the face of Libya. He became premier as the country began to transform itself from an international pariah accused of fomenting terrorism and crippled by sanctions to one seen as instituting reforms that led to growing economic and political ties with US and Europe.