TRIPOLI – Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi, his special forces commander who fled abroad during Libya’s 2011 uprising, was imprisoned in Tripoli on Thursday after Niger agreed to send him back from house arrest there.

Saadi, who had a brief career as soccer player in Italy and often lived the playboy life during his father’s rule, is the first of Gaddafi’s sons the central government has managed to arrest since the former dictator was overthrown.

Saadi Gaddafi.

Gaddafi’s more prominent son Saif al-Islam, long viewed as his heir, has been held captive by fighters in western Libya who refuse to hand him over to a government they deem too weak to secure and try him.

Eager to close another chapter from the four-decade Gaddafi rule, Tripoli had long been seeking the extradition of Saadi, who had fled to the southern neighbor by slipping over the porous sub-Saharan border after the uprising.

“The Libyan government received today Saadi Gaddafi and he arrived in Tripoli,” Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s cabinet said in a statement that thanked Niger’s government for its help.

The government said Saadi, 40, would be treated according to international law.