LONDON, UK – Former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem has been found dead in Vienna’s Danube river.
A police spokesman told the Associated Press that the 69-year-old’s corpse was found floating in the river in the Austrian capital on Sunday morning.
The spokesman said the corpse showed no external signs of violence and the cause of death was not immediately clear.
However, the Agence France Presse reported that Ghanem appeared to have suffered from a heart attack.
Officials are to carry out an autopsy in the coming days.
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Libya’s prime minister from 2003 until 2006 and oil minister until 2011, Ghanem defected from Muammar Gaddafi’s regime last May and fled to Vienna, where he worked as a consultant for a company, according to the BBC.
At the time of his defection he criticized the bloodshed in Libya, saying the violence meted out by the regime had become “unbearable” and made his position untenable.
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