A son of Muammar Gaddafi has been admitted to a Lebanese hospital after a hunger strike that began two weeks ago in protest at his imprisonment since 2015 without trial, Lebanon’s interior minister said today.

Hannibal Gaddafi has been held in Lebanon since a prosecutor charged him with withholding information about the fate of Imam Musa al-Sadr, a Lebanese Shiite cleric who disappeared while in Libya in 1978.

Announcing his decision to go on hunger strike earlier this month, Hannibal Gaddafi – who was two years old at the time of Sadr’s disappearance – claimed he was being wronged and accused of something he did not do.

Lebanese Shiites have for years held the Gaddafi regime, toppled in 2011, responsible for Sadr’s disappearance, saying Libya kidnapped him during his trip to that country.

Hannibal Gaddafi was transferred to a hospital from the facility where he is being held on Wednesday after his condition was thought to be deteriorating, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi told Reuters.

Reem al-Dabri, a spokesman for Hannibal Gaddafi, said his health was deteriorating. Noting his very young age at the time of Sadr’s disappearance, he stressed that Hannibal Gaddafi had nothing to do with the case and called him a “political hostage for undisclosed reasons”.

Hannibal Gaddafi fled Libya in 2011 as a rebellion against his father’s regime raged, eventually arriving in Syria. From there Dabri said Hannibal Gaddafi was kidnapped and taken to Lebanon in 2015.

Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebels in 2011.

Sadr, who Libya said had left the country safely, is widely believed to have been killed after being captured.

Sadr was a founder of the Shia Amal Movement, which along with Hezbollah dominates Lebanon’s Shia political scene.