Death of former Libyan oil minister in Vienna ‘could be murder’

Libya’s former prime minister and oil minister Shokri Ghanem, a prominent defector from Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi’s government, drowned in the River Danube, Vienna police said yesterday – but a Libyan security source suggested he could have been murdered.

Mr Ghanem’s fully-clothed body was found in the Danube in Vienna on Sunday, a few hundred metres from his home. According to a preliminary autopsy there were no indications of foul play or suicide.

A Libyan security source said they were investigating the death and believed he could have been pushed in.

The former Gaddafi confidant was privy to potentially damaging information, including on oil deals with Western governments. Mr Ghanem, 69, had been chairman of Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation before defecting last year during the uprising against Gaddafi.

Saad Djebbar, a UK-based Algerian lawyer who knew Mr Ghanem and advised the Libyan government during the Lockerbie affair, yesterday said the former minister was not the sort of man to kill himself.

He said: “He would not be the kind of man for suicide.”