On August 31, we do not need more speeches about Imam Musa al-Sadr.
We need answers.
Forty-eight years have passed since the disappearance in Libya of Imam Sayyed Musa al-Sadr and his two companions, Sheikh Mohammed Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine.
Forty-eight years of statements, committees, investigations, promises—and endless questions.
And the result?
No complete truth. No bodies. No definitive account. And no accountability that puts the final pieces together.
And the most uncomfortable question is not simply:
Where is Imam al-Sadr?
It is:
Who benefits from keeping the mystery alive to this day?
Muammar Gaddafi’s regime fell in 2011.
Security agencies collapsed, prisons were opened, files emerged, witnesses came forward, and mass graves and secret detention sites were uncovered.
It was only logical to assume that the fall of the regime whose authorities were accused of responsibility for the disappearance of Imam al-Sadr and his companions would finally open the door to the truth.
But it did not.
To this day, successive Libyan authorities have been accused of failing to fully cooperate in the case, while the fate of the three men remains unknown.
And that makes the question entirely legitimate:
Did the truth disappear with Gaddafi? Or is there someone who still possesses it—and is afraid to reveal it?
And why?
In the years following Gaddafi’s fall, more than one lead, story, and suspected body emerged.
In 2012, a body believed to be that of Imam al-Sadr was handed over to the Lebanese side. DNA testing, however, established that it belonged to Libyan opposition figure Mansour al-Kikhia.
In 2016, another body emerged, but DNA testing again produced negative results. The case remained open.
Then, in 2025, a BBC investigation revealed new evidence concerning a body discovered in a secret morgue in Tripoli in 2011. Facial-recognition analysis suggested that the body could potentially be that of Imam al-Sadr.
But even this evidence did not constitute definitive forensic identification, and the Imam’s family and the Amal Movement rejected it as conclusive.
And this is where the questions multiply.
If the Imam was killed, where is his body?
If he was imprisoned, who held him? And when did his life end?
If orders were given to conceal his fate, who issued them?
And if the truth exists in files, testimonies, or the archives of Libya’s security services, why has it not fully emerged after the fall of the regime?
And perhaps most troubling of all:
Why did the Libyan revolution, after opening so many doors and exposing so many secrets, fail to reveal the fate of one of the most prominent political disappearances in the history of the region?
We have no right to accuse a specific party without evidence.
But we have every right to ask the questions that remain unanswered.
Saying that the case is “old” is not an answer.
Saying that “Gaddafi is gone” is not an answer.
Saying that “the case is still under investigation” is not an answer.
Truth does not expire.
And justice does not become less important simply because 48 years have passed.
If anything, the opposite is true.
Every year that passes without the truth makes the question even more urgent:
Who wants this case to remain open without a conclusion?
And has the continued disappearance of Imam al-Sadr become, for certain forces, more useful than knowing the truth about what happened to him?
This is not a sectarian issue.
It is a question of the state, national dignity, and Arab collective memory.
And those who raise the Imam’s picture every August 31, only to return to silence the next day, should ask themselves:
Do we really want the truth? Or do we simply want to remember the man without demanding that the truth about what happened to him be uncovered?
After 48 years, what is needed is no longer more words.
What is needed is to open the archives, disclose the documents, question surviving witnesses and officials, follow every lead, and hold accountable anyone whose responsibility is established.
For Imam Musa al-Sadr and his two companions to remain nothing more than photographs raised every year, while the truth remains buried somewhere, is not loyalty to their cause.