Late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's businessman son, Hannibal, was kidnapped in Lebanon's Bekaa region late Friday evening and released a few hours later.

"Hannibal was kidnapped by an armed group in the region of Bekaa while he was travelling from Syria, before being released on Friday night in the same region," a Lebanese security source told AFP.

A Lebanese channel - Beirut-based Al Jadeed TV - aired a video earlier in which Hannibal urged anyone with information about Imam Moussa al-Sadr to come forward, The Independent reported. Al-Sadr, a prominent Lebanese Shia cleric and founder of the Amal Movement, disappeared in Libya decades ago.

"I hope that the people who I mean for them to hear me, and they have evidence to bring out immediately without delay. Because enough of this suffering, enough. Enough injustice, people here want their son," he said in the video, according to Al Jazeera.

"I am with people who have a cause and they are loyal to their cause. We should respect their loyalty to their cause and at least give them the truth," the 40-year-old businessman said, according to the Associated Press.

Hannibal, a former playboy, fled to Algeria after his father was killed by opposition forces in 2011. He, along with his sister Ayesha and mother Safiya, obtained asylum in Oman a year later.