The Lebanese justice system has drastically reduced the bail it was demanding for the release of Hannibal Gaddafi, which should allow the son of the former Libyan dictator to be released quickly, a judicial official and his lawyer told AFP on Thursday.

On October 17, the investigating judge ordered the release of Hannibal Gaddafi, who had been held without trial for ten years, in exchange for bail of $11 million.

His lawyers had contested this amount. On Thursday, "the investigating judge decided to reduce the bail from $11 million to $900,000, and to lift the travel ban," said a judicial official who requested anonymity.

The Lebanese authorities who arrested Hannibal Gaddafi in 2015 accused him of concealing information about the disappearance of Lebanese Shiite leader Moussa Sadr in Libya in 1978, a crime for which they blame his father. Hannibal, now 49, was two years old at the time.

The affair has poisoned relations between the two countries.

"The bail will be paid very quickly and Hannibal will leave Lebanon very soon," his French lawyer, Laurent Bayon, told AFP, stating that his destination is "confidential."

He specified that Muammar Gaddafi's son is in possession of a Libyan passport.

Before being reduced, the $11 million bail was divided into two parts: $10 million as compensation for victims and $1 million as a guarantee of appearance, according to the lawyer.

"The fact that the investigating judge decided that he does not have to bear the cost of compensating the victims implies that he is innocent in the Sadr case," said Mr. Bayon.

Muammar Gaddafi was killed during an uprising in Libya in 2011, along with three of his sons.

Hannibal Gaddafi, who had legal troubles in France and Switzerland in the 2000s, had fled to Syria to join his wife, a Lebanese model, before being arrested in Lebanon.