[2][3][4] A day after Al-Liby was captured, he was in military custody on the ship USS San Antonio in the Mediterranean Sea.

[7] In the early hours of Thursday 10 October 2013 Zeidan was kidnapped from the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli by armed militants and taken to an undisclosed location.

[11] The Libyan Prime Ministers Office denied early reports of a kidnapping, and dispelled such claims as rumors on its Facebook page.

[8] Police units left the Corinthia hotel area and the Prime Ministers Office, and were instead replaced with anti-government militiamen who claimed that Zeidan had been arrested.

[11] Abdel-Moneim al-Hour, an official with the interior ministry's anti-crime committee, also claimed that Zeidan was under arrest and would be charged with violating state security.

[11] The group Libyan Revolutionaries Operations Room said they abducted Zeidan as a reaction to the government of Libya's involvement in the American capture of Anas al-Liby,[13] and his statements in late September calling for an international force to be sent to Libya to disarm and liquidate the revolutionary militias that worked with NATO to overthrow and kill Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The source also claimed that the arrest warrant supposedly signed by the Attorney General was a forgery, and that several other security officials were believed to have been aware of the planned kidnapping in the week leading up to it, but had not acted.

[22] In a TV address to the nation on 11 October, Zeidan called the incident an attempted coup d'état, and blamed it on an unnamed political party in the GNC.

[1] Zeidan also vowed a strong response to his kidnappers, and signaled the possibility of an imminent crackdown by the Libyan Government.

Zeidan also stated that a crisis committee, including revolutionaries, had been formed, and that previously delayed funds for police and security forces were now being dispensed by the Central Bank of Libya.

Zeidan claimed that Mustafa Treiki and Mohamed al-Kilani, both of whom are Independent members of the General National Congress for Zawiya, were the political leadership behind the kidnapping.

Kilani had also previously been a key figure in the GNC who had pushed for the storming of Bani Walid in October 2012, and had also served in a military capacity during the siege.

Treiki and Kilani did however admit to having previously unsuccessfully attempted to organise a vote of no confidence in the GNC in order to topple Zeidan's Government.

[12] Sharing the platform with Treiki and Kilani at the press conference was Abdelmonem al-Said (the commander of the CCA Fornaj unit).

There were reports that the Justice and Construction Party had failed in an attempt to gather the 120 votes needed to dismiss Zeidan from his office, and so had instead offered a truce.