THE idea that the favored son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi might be running in the country’s planned presidential election demonstrates at one and the same time the absurdity and the tragedy of this strife-torn country.

Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi was once seen as pushing for reform and liberalization in the last years of his father’s rule. But once the revolution had broken out in Benghazi, he quickly joined his brothers and father in vowing to crush the insurrection without mercy.

Saif fled when the regime toppled but was caught disguised as a local tribesman as his convoy headed across the Sahara to Niger. His captors were from Zintan, a town in the Western mountains which refused to hand him over either to the government in Tripoli or to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which wanted him and his father and the dictator’s security chief Abdullah Senussi on war crimes and human rights charges.

Saif, who lost part of a finger when he was captured, was held by Zintan for six years in conditions rumored to become ever more comfortable in return for generous payments from Gaddafi cash stashed overseas. Last year, the elected parliament, the House of Representatives, granted an amnesty for all imprisoned members of the old regime. Saif was freed and disappeared, though his lawyer insisted he remained in Libya. Now a spokesman is saying that Saif will be standing in the presidential election.

But significantly, at no point since his release has Saif himself made a public appearance, nor even put out a video. This has fueled speculation that he is mentally ill, suffering from deep depression. This, the theory goes, has not stopped supporters of his father from pushing him forward to contest the presidency. Their key platform is that however repressive was Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship, it gave Libyans peace and prosperity and, within the mercurial whim of the dictator, a high degree of stability. Even those who hated the regime, freely admit that the revolution has brought nothing but years of anarchy and chaos, a disaster which both Gaddafi and Saif predicted when the revolt broke out.

Yet there is currently no chance that Saif, even if he is a well man, can stand for the presidency. For a start he is still wanted by the ICC. But in addition there is now little chance of presidential elections being held this year as the United Nations hoped. The more likely development is that eastern strong man Khalifa Hafter and the Tripoli-based government of Faiez Serraj, which is recognized by the international community, will agree to work together in a government of national unity.

Moreover, in any presidential election in which he sought to stand, Saif would face condemnation for being largely responsible for unleashing the bloody chaos in which Libyans now find themselves. This was not because of his role in trying to crush the revolt but because in 2008 he cut a deal with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the armed wing of the local Muslim Brotherhood. Better armed and organized than rival militias, the LIFG played a key role in the revolution, refused to disband after victory and went on welcome the arrival of Al-Qaeda and Daesh (the so-called IS) terrorists into the bloody post-revolutionary maelstrom they had helped to create. This was Saif’s greatest crime.