By Muhammad Mamman
Thousands of Libyans converged on the western town of Bani Walid on Friday to attend the funeral of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in a display that underscored lingering loyalties and deep political fault lines across the country. 
Saif al-Islam, once considered his father’s heir apparent and a controversial figure in Libya’s post-revolution landscape, was shot dead earlier this week in his home in Zintan by unidentified assailants, Libyan authorities and his team said. 
The funeral procession in Bani Walid — a longtime stronghold of Gaddafi-era support — drew mourners from across Libya. Attendees carried portraits of Saif al-Islam and his father and waved the plain green flag used during decades of Gaddafi rule, symbols of both nostalgia and unresolved national tensions. 
Local authorities implemented tight security around the ceremony. Emergency services and municipal officials set up stations throughout the town to assist large numbers of visitors and to ensure public safety ahead of the burial. 
The choice of Bani Walid followed reported efforts by forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar to block Saif al-Islam’s burial in the coastal city of Sirte, placing conditions on mourning activities that the family rejected; instead, his body was taken to Bani Walid to be laid to rest beside that of his brother Khamis, who was killed during the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. 
Libya remains beset by fragmentation, with rival administrations in Tripoli and the east unable to unify the country’s fractured political landscape. The funeral has become a focus of competing narratives — for some attendees a moment of homage to a lost leader, for others a reminder of unresolved divisions more than a decade after the 2011 revolution. 
