Ali Zeidan (left), pictured here with Secretary of State John Kerry in March 2013, was kidnapped but released soon after by rebels hired to provide the PM security. (Wikimedia Commons)

Libya's Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was kidnapped before dawn and subsequently freed early on Thursday afternoon by the Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room (LROR) in Tripoli.

Mr. Zeidan was taken captive at a luxury hotel in the capital that was heavily guarded, without any struggle or gunfire according to the spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's office, Amal al-Jarrari. The LROR fighters that kidnapped him were members of an independent militia that are routinely hired as the Prime Minister's security force and for other public security tasks.

The militants reportedly turned against him briefly after finding out that Mr. Zeidan was aware of a U.S. operation that captured Al Qaeda leader Abu Anas al-Liby in Tripoli on Saturday, but released Mr. Zeidan soon after. Anas al-Liby was reportedly a trusted lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden, and was also involved in the planning of attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the former incident killing over 200 people in 1998.             

In a cabinet meeting after being released, Mr. Zeidan thanked the "real revolutionaries" who performed a rescue operation to release him. He was quoted as saying, "I salute the revolutionaries who had an important role. The real revolutionaries, those who rose above greedy demands, I salute them for what they did in this affair."

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