Thirty-three years have passed without knowing the fate of Imam Sayyed Moussa Sadr who was disappeared with his two companions following a visit to Libya on August 1978.
Thirty-three years have passed without knowing the fate of Imam Sayyed Moussa Sadr who was disappeared with his two companions following a visit to Libya on August 1978.
This year, the anniversary of Sayyed Moussa’s disappearance concurs with toppling the rude regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
According to former MP Hasan Yaaqoub the concurrence was not a coincidence.
“It’s a divine prudence for the Gaddafi regime to fall in the anniversary of Imam Sadr’s disappearance. Imam Sadr and his two companions were also disappeared at the end of Ramadan month of that year”.
In an interview with al-Manar Website, MP Yaaqoub stressed that the case of Imam Sadr and his two companions, Sheikh Mohammad Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine, was not of a compromise, adding that it “is our right to know the fate of them”.
Mp Yaaqoub is also the son of Shiekh Mohammad Yaaqoub.
Imam Sadr was a cleric who called for unity between Lebanese people. He jointed between slogans and actions as he demanded a strong state that defends all its citizens without discrimination.
GOVERNMENT EFFORTS INSUFFICIENT
MP Yaaqoub said that the Lebanese government has not been doing its best to know the fate of Imam Sadr, calling on the authorities to take into consideration this case.
The Lebanese government is to send soon a diplomatic delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour, to Libya in order to discuss the issue of Imam Sadr with officials in the Libyan Transitional Council.
However, the MP considered this move insufficient, calling on the government to send political, judicial and security delegations along with Mansour’s delegation.
Answering a question about the possibility that Imam Sadr and his companions are alive, MP Yaaqoub said: “according to information based on officials defected from Gaddafi’s regime, Imam Sadr, and his to companions are still alive”.
“There still some towns that are under Gaddafi’s control, we have to wait until the regime is fully toppled to know the fate of Imam Sadr”.
IMAM OF DISINHERITED 
Imam Sadr was born in Qom, Iran on March 15, 1928. His eminence attended his primary school in the southern Lebanese town of Tyre, his hometown. Then he moved to the Iranian capital Tehran where he got in 1956 a degree in Islamic Jurisprudence and Political Sciences from Tehran University.
Following that, he moved back to Qom to study Theology and Islamic philosophy. Before leaving Qom to Najaf to study theology, Imam Sadr edited a magazine called Maktabel- Eslam.
In 1960, his eminence accepted an invitation to become the leading figure in Tyre.
In 1969, Imam Sadr was appointed as the first head of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council (SISC). In 1974 he founded the Movement of the Disinherited to press for better economic and social conditions for his people. He established a number of schools and medical clinics throughout southern Lebanon, many of which are still in operation today.
In August 1978, al-Sadr, Sheikh Mohammad Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine departed for Libya to meet with government officials. The three were never heard from again. It is widely believed that the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi ordered Imam Sadr’s abduction.
