Haftar's sons' command, stormed the courthouse of Sabha and threatened judges and staffers to prevent them from ruling on Saif's appeal. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya expressed concerns over the forced closure of the Sabha court and warned that sanctions could be levied against parties responsible. On 28 November, Gaddafi stated to Al Arabiya that Libyan judicial authorities refused to hold hearings on his disqualification appeal. On 2 December 2021, a Libyan court ruled that Saif be reinstated as a presidential candidate. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported that Saif had secretly visited Egypt and met with President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Egyptian Chief of Intelligence Abbas Kamel before his reinstatement. On 29 January 2022, through a statement published by his lawyer Khalid al-Zaidi, Gaddafi proposed an initiative to resolve the political crisis that began after presidential elections scheduled for December 2021 were delayed. The initiative proposed postponing presidential elections and proceeding with parliamentary elections without delay. On 6 July 2022, Saif presented two separate proposals to resolve the ongoing Libyan crisis through a written statement disseminated by his lawyer Khalid al-Zaidi. In the first proposal, Saif argued for the appointment of a neutral party to oversee urgent, non-exclusive presidential and parliamentary elections in which everyone would be allowed to participate. In the second proposal, Saif recommended that current political figures should all collectively withdraw from the electoral process in order to make way for new faces chosen by the Libyan people through transparent elections. In December, 2022, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah called for Saif to surrender himself to the ICC. In January 2023, Saif's political team reiterated his legal right to run for political office despite the ICC arrest warrant. Russian ties In May 2019, two Russians affiliated with Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group, Maxim Shugaley and Samer Hasan Ali Sueyfan, were arrested in Tripoli for conspiring with Saif al-Islam. They were released in December 2020. In September 2020, Corriere della Sera reported that a Russian airplane took Saif al-Islam from Zintan to Moscow to hold secret meetings. In June 2021, Mahmoud Refaat claimed that Saif had secretly visited Damascus to meet with senior figures of the Bashar al-Assad regime. The secret meeting was brokered by Russia. On 12 August 2021, prosecutors in Tripoli issued an arrest warrant for Saif over suspected links to the Wagner Group. Personal life There are two different stories about his mother's origin.