Late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son Hannibal has been freed after being briefly kidnapped by an armed group in Lebanon, security sources said.

In a video shown on Lebanese TV, the captive businessman was seen appealing for more information concerning the 1978 disappearance of the prominent Lebanese Shia cleric Musa al-Sadr.

He was freed in the city of Baalbek and dispatched to Beirut, police told AP.
The 40-year-old former playboy was given sanctuary in Oman in 2012.

His father Muammar was overthrown by rebels in a 2011 uprising.

Al-Sadr, one of the most prominent Shia clerics of the 20th Century, disappeared along with two others during a trip to Libya in 1978.

"I am with people who have a cause and they are loyal to their cause," Gaddafi, who is married to a Lebanese woman, said in the video. "We should respect their loyalty to their cause and at least give them the truth."

Hannibal Gaddafi was arrested in 2008 for allegedly beating up two servants in a Geneva luxury hotel, sparking a diplomatic spat that dragged on for months. In 2005, a French court convicted him of striking a pregnant companion in a Paris hotel. He was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and a small fine.
He fled to Algeria after Tripoli fell, along with his mother and several other relatives.