Is Muammar Gaddafi, the former leader of Libya, alive? No, that's not true. The death of Muammar Gaddafi is well documented and there is no evidence proving him being alive now.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published by a TikTok account on April 5, 2023 under the title "Muammar Gaddafi is alive!"
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Apr 26 10:12:19 2023 UTC)
The claim has been shared by dozens of diffferent accounts on TikTok, making the same or similar claims, with edited photos of Muammar Gaddafi. In some videos, the logo of "FaceApp" could be seen, which is a photo and video editing application that can be used for making faces look older in photos.
In a video, someone posted an edited photo of Muammar Gaddafi with a caption saying "the leader has appeared in a celebration ceremony in an African country, and the source has not been known yet."
In another video, someone claimed that Gaddafi has appeared in Moscow, and someone else in another video claimed that Gaddafi will give a live speech soon.
However, the death of the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, is well documented as occurring in 2011, and there is no record or evidence that indicates he is still alive.
An article by BBC News with the title "Muammar Gaddafi: how he died," describes how he was murdered. "What is certain is that at 16:30 local time, Mahmoud Jibril, the NTC prime minister, confirmed the news that Col Gaddafi was dead, saying: "We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed," the article reports.
Muammar Gaddafi is not the only killed political leader in the region, whom people claim to be alive from time to time. Previously, there has been similar trends regarding Saddam Hussein, the former President of Iraq.
