Real Dictators - Colonel Gaddafi Part 7: 9/11 and a New Ally

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

On September 11th, 2001, life in the West is transformed in an instant. Amidst the fall-out, Gaddafi spots an opportunity. To the surprise of many, he makes it his mission to re-join the international fold. The Libyan dictator pitches his Bedouin tent on the front lawns of palaces and parliaments across the world. Muammar Gaddafi - the man of many masks - is transforming into the West’s most eccentric friend. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A plane has crashed into one of the towers there. New York City, Tuesday, September 11, 2001. At 8.46 a.m., the first of two passenger planes smashes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. 200 miles to the southwest, a third plane crashes into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defense. A fourth jet is brought down in a field in Pennsylvania. All had been hijacked by terrorists, 19 in total, who had turned the aircraft into flying

bombs. In New York, it takes just 102 minutes for the Twin Towers to collapse, causing devastation in lower Manhattan. A combined 2,977 people die. Played out live on global media, the events of 9-11 bring the world to a standstill. The images are seared into history. There have been countless wars, revolutions and numerous acts of terrorism since 1945. But this single massive symbolic attack is an utter game-changer.

America is no longer inviolate. While President George Bush is being whisked to safety, news that the hijackers were Saudi Arabian causes further confusion. Saudi Arabia are allies, aren't they? But this type of warfare owes no allegiance to nations or governments. This attack was committed in the name of an ideology. And for its warriors, death is of no consequence. Normally there is one person whose name you could be sure to add to the roster, acting

as a cheerleader perhaps, even given his track record, attaching himself as one of the operation's signatories. But it's the complete opposite. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya expresses horror. He offers his full support to the West in bringing the 9-11 architects to book. In the call-out for donors, he even offers his own blood. Why is he doing this? Why, after decades of antagonism, is he siding with the old enemy, the great Satan?

Because America and the West are his only guarantors against the upheaval that is about to sweep the Arab world. Over the coming decade, for Gaddafi, challenges will come from many quarters. He'll find himself besieged by many different foes. For the moment, the headlines are being grabbed by this new radical group, which goes by the name of Al-Qaeda. This is part seven of the Gaddafi story. And this is Real Dictators.

Al-Qaeda as an organization is vague. There is a nominal head in Osama bin Laden, whom Gaddafi swiftly denounces. Bin Laden, from a wealthy Saudi family, is a near-mystical figure, a rebel fighter who broadcasts messages to the faithful from remote locations. Al-Qaeda becomes a flag around which any dissident group can rally. Its tenets are simple. A belief in Islamic fundamentalism. A hatred of Western dominance.

Al-Qaeda also has a disregard for old-school Nasser-style Arab nationalist dictators. Men like Saddam Hussein. Men like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Moderate Muslims are swift to condemn Al-Qaeda. But Al-Qaeda's devotees are scattered throughout the world, in underground groups, in cells. Some are deeply embedded in Western societies. There will be countless terrorist attacks over the coming years.

Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca, Jakarta, Istanbul, Madrid, London, Baghdad, Algiers, Paris. Al-Qaeda has not materialized out of thin air. It's a kindred spirit to radical Islamism centered in Afghanistan, a movement called the Taliban. The Taliban are an offshoot of a resistance group that sprung up to repel the armies of the Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979. These fighters were known as the Mujahideen. And they were backed, with irony, by the CIA, part of the Cold War struggle against communism. Bin Laden himself was the Mujahideen fighter. And now the tricks learned are being used against his old benefactors.

It's what the CIA calls blowback. Young men from across the Arab world, including Libya, went off to do their bit for the Mujahideen over the nine-plus years of Soviet occupation. They returned to their home countries with ideas of a pure, more doctrinal form of Islamic society, one backed by force of arms. Colonel Gaddafi is all too aware of this emerging threat to his rule and to his singular vision of society. Just next door to Libya, in Egypt, a political party in tune with these feelings, the Muslim

Brotherhood is already on the rise. Gaddafi's curious realignment with the West began two years back, in April 1999. After the intervention by his friend, Nelson Mandela, he handed over the two Lockerbie suspects for trial. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Lameen Khalifa Fima. Gaddafi now follows this with a formal acceptance of responsibility for the plane's bombing, and in 2003 agrees to pay $2.7 billion to the victims' families. The wording is key.

Gaddafi acknowledges Libyan participation in Lockerbie, but absolves himself from personal criminal culpability. But it's a means to an end. Libya said it was responsible for ensuring a fund of $2.7 billion was made available in response to a private prosecution by the American victims. And that's true. But actually actually the money didn't come from Libya it was forced out of oil companies other companies with

contacts and contracts inside Libya who actually amassed it for Libyan authorities who then passed the law to the United States it didn't cost Libya very much the Libyan authorities in effect made it quite clear that the only reason they were paying the money, or arranging for its payment, was to make sure they could get rid of the sanction. There are further settlements for the deaths of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, and those killed in the terror attacks on the Berlin nightclub and the French airliner UTA-772. With one final hurdle to clear, his renunciation of weapons of mass destruction, he will find

himself back in the international fold. The crippling UN sanctions lifted. Whether he has any weapons of mass destruction to denounce, let alone destroy, is open to question. Qaddafi, in his isolation, it became more and more unlikely that he was going to become a genuine nuclear power. And I think over time, as Libya was kind of cut off from the rest of the world, maintaining weapons of mass destruction arsenal wasn't actually going to win him any points on the international stage. Particularly in light of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein with the Anglo-American

invasion in the winter and spring of 2003, Qaddafi didn't want to end up like Saddam Hussein. He viewed whatever incipient weapons of mass destruction programs he had going, Qaddafi gave these up as a way to sort of morph himself from a pariah to an asset to Western powers. In March 2004, as a reward for good behavior, he's soon taking tea in his famous Bedouin tent with none other than British Prime Minister Tony Blair. George Bush would have been too much. Blair is seen as more PR friendly. Libya is North Africa's primary petroleum exporter and Libya has immense resources underneath the desert which are sought after by energy-hungry Europe and to a lesser extent the United States. But because Gaddafi had been demonized and caricatured for decades, how to bring the mad dog from the Middle East in from the cold was going to be a tricky thing.

And so certainly Tony Blair, as the supreme ally of George Bush, derisively sometimes referred to as George Bush's lapdog. Tony Blair could act as an intermediary to some degree. Britain had lots of its own issues with Gaddafi related to the murder of police officer Yvonne Fletcher and to Lockerbie. And so Britain certainly had a lot of security issues with Gaddafi. I think Blair viewed himself as a mediator in that regard. In a way, he was reprising the role that he was playing with the international community between the Americans and the impending invasion of Iraq. It's an awkward spectacle. A rather stiff Gaddafi goes through the motions of being a genial host.

Blair looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. But the colonel knows that humble pie must be swallowed. In Iraq, American forces have just caught Saddam Hussein. He will soon be swinging from the gallows. Bush is saying that America is fighting for the triumph of freedom, Gaddafi proclaims. When we were supporting liberation movements in the world, we were arguing that it was for the victory of freedom. We both agree.

We were fighting for the cause of freedom. Who knew? They were on the same side all along. Who knew? They were on the same side all along. Behind the scenes, quietly, Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell signs a major gas exploration deal. As part of the new love-in, Gaddafi is also schmoozed by Nicolas Sarkozy of France, welcomed to the Élysée Palace with full military honours. He visits Rome, where Italy awards Libya $5 billion in reparations for the horrors of the old colonial days.

Gaddafi hails Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi as a new Iron Man. Gaddafi enjoys a private dig. In the photo call can be seen pinned to his uniform a photo of Umar Mukhtar, the Libyan national hero executed by the Italians in 1931. In October 2010, Gaddafi will trouser another 5 billion euros a year from the European Union to stem the flow of migrants now crossing the Mediterranean. Gaddafi, who not so long ago was professing his pan-Africanism, makes a crass remark, claiming that such measures are necessary to prevent a quote-unquote Black Europe.

But he can say what he wants now. In 2006, the US removes Libya from its list of state sponsors of terror. The ankle tag is off. The UK also, as with the United States, has significant designs on the Libyan energy sector. So let's not forget that. BP and other international concerns were very much interested in reopening the Libyan market. Well, I'm not surprised. You see, this is politics.

You don't have friends. You have interests in politics. You don't have friends. You don't have enemies. You have interests. Tony Blair secured the guaranteed lots of agreements. He signed a big oil agreement there, and he became friends with Bidefi. But this is politics. I don't feel angry with Tony Blair. This became friends with Gaddafi. But this is politics.

I don't feel angry with Tony Blair. This is the interests of the UK. What can you do? Gaddafi is on a roll. Where only recently he was forging links with Kim Jong-il of North Korea, he's now parading himself as a good boy, the new school prefect. himself as a good boy, the new school prefect. Backs are scratched like never before. Gaddafi gives up key intelligence to the West. On the side, they do him a few favours regarding Libyan dissidents. In one of the most extraordinary moves, Gaddafi makes himself available to the world's media. He hosts press junkets at his Tripoli palace, giving strange, otherworldly interviews.

In possibly one of the most surreal pieces of television ever recorded, he appears as a guest on CNN's famous Larry King talk show. Our special guest tonight is Brother Leader Muammar Gaddafi. He then very belatedly disavowed terrorism and sought to make financial amends to his victims. For lack of a better term, it's one of the phases that he went through in his 42-year career.

Though it doesn't take long for the old revolutionary to revert to type. In a speech to the UN, the former mad dog slams Western aggression. In spring 2010, he declares a jihad against Switzerland. Relations have soured since his son Hannibal was arrested for allegedly beating his servants at a luxury Geneva hotel. Throughout this tale, we haven't paid much attention to Gaddafi's family. Thus far, his domestic life has proven quite unremarkable.

Muammar Gaddafi has been married twice. There was a brief union with Fatih al-Nuri, daughter of General Khalid, a senior figure in King Idris's administration. They have a son, Muhammad. But that was in the old days. In 1970, just after the coup that brings him to power, the new Colonel Gaddafi weds Safia Farkash, a nurse who looks after him when he's hospitalized with appendicitis. They have seven children,

They have seven children, two named Saif, plus Al-Saadi, Mutasim, Hannibal, Aisha, and Kamis. Life Che Gaddafi is opulent, but not overtly extravagant by the standards of some dictators. The Gaddafis live at Bab al-Izizia, a two-and-a-half-square-mile guarded compound in Tripoli's southern suburbs, the one the Americans bombed back in 1986. Out front now stands a huge sculpture of a clenched golden fist wrapped around a US warplane. Gaddafi is inclined to give his particularly defiant speeches standing before it. In the grounds of Bab al-Aziziyah there's a sprawling nexus of tents where Gaddafi receives dignitaries and sometimes sleeps, though he increasingly spends more time in his palace's underground bunkers.

Above ground there are stables and tennis courts. Gaddafi is a keen horseman. He likes sports, especially football. He allegedly enjoys reading and is supposedly a fan of Beethoven. The composer, not the film. Unfortunately, as his children enter adulthood, they acquire a taste for the jet-set lifestyle. Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's anointed heir, the oldest child from his second marriage, gains a reputation as an international playboy.

He is a recipient of an MBA from the University of Vienna, where a place is kept in the city zoo to house Barney and Fredo, the two pet tigers which accompany him on all his travels. The family oversees an oligarchical carve-up of Libya's resources. Sons Mohammed and Hannibal control, respectively, Libya's telecommunications sector and maritime transport. Saadi later ends up the head of Libya's special forces. But the Gaddafi boys are better known for their wild partying. In European hotspots, on yachts, in the Caribbean,

where they quaff expensive champagne and lavish vast sums on private musical performances. From Beyoncé, from Mariah Carey, from 50 Cent. There's talk of prostitutes, of drugs. Such antics do not go down well with the Libyan people.

I was pretty stunned on my first visit to Benghazi in the 2000s. Yeah, there was this big artificial lake in the middle of the city and I was told by locals that raw sewage was being pumped into it, hence this horrible smell as you got near to it. In the downtown Benghazi the buildings looked like they were in a war zone, they were left dismantled, dilapidated, all you could see were the satellite dishes on all of the roofs. Qadhafi didn't treat the south and other regions much better either, but I think in the east there was this particular sense that because it was always the center of rebellion against Tripoli, against the central regime, that

it was kept deliberately down. And of course, a lot of people in Benghazi, it was also the seat of the monarchy. And a lot of people in Benghazi believed that Benghazi should be the economic capital of Libya. And even today, those demands are still ongoing. People in the East still feel that they've been marginalized and not given their due. Those demands are still ongoing. People in the East still feel that they've been marginalised and not given their due. Further Gaddafi relatives are the benefactors of the brother leader's nepotism. His cousin, Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, is the key member of his inner circle.

His brother-in-law, Abdullah Sanusi, is Libya's head of intelligence. Loyalty to the family, to the clan, is baked into the Bedouin psyche like Saharan dust. Gaddafi's Gaddafa tribe has been shored up by its relationship with more powerful clans, and there are bonds of honor. While Saif al-Islam is partying around Europe or relaxing at his 10-million10 million Hampstead mansion, his brother Saadi is seeking to strike out in a new direction.

He wants to make it as a professional soccer player. The fact that he has limited talent for the game does not seem an impediment. He's assigned ownership of the top Al-Ali Tripoli team and given its captaincy. He's the only player commentators are allowed to mention by name. To ensure his reputation as a star midfielder, teammates are rewarded handsomely every time they pass him the ball. In matches there are woeful refereeing decisions awarded against Tripoli's opponents, a string of suspicious penalties and curious sendings off. In July 2000, in Saadi's first season, fans of arch-rival Alali Benghazi, one of Libya's oldest clubs, protest against the blatant corruption.

They parade through the streets, a donkey dressed in Saadi's shirt. Saadi has the Benghazi club liquidated. Their stadium demolished. The staff arrested. The manager thrown in jail. Al-Ali Tripoli win the league. Saadi is made captain of the Libyan national team. In 2003, one of football's strangest ever transfers takes place.

Reportedly leaning on his father's influence with Italian Premier Berlusconi, Saadi, already 30, is signed by Italian Serie A team Perugia. It's reportedly the only transfer in soccer history where a player pays to play for the team. In a bid to get match fit, Saadi hires Diego Maradona and disgraced Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson as personal coaches. After a solitary 15-minute performance, coming on as a sub in a meaningless match, Saadi is forced to leave the club after failing a drugs test. He moves to Udinese, where he makes one more brief appearance, then on to Sampdoria, where his only contribution to the club is a hotel bill for 392,000 euros, including a five-star

suite rented for his two Dobermans. The connection between the Gaddafis and football does not end there. In 2004, Colonel Gaddafi himself is just hours away from buying Manchester United FC. The bid fails. The club sells to the American Glazer family instead. He settles instead for a 5% stake in Italian powerhouse Juventus. If you're struggling to picture Gaddafi sitting in the director's box at Old Trafford, eating prawn sandwiches,

it's perhaps equally unlikely that he would ever become a style icon. In 2009, upmarket glossy magazine Vanity Fair runs an item, Colonel Gaddafi, A Life in Fashion. It lists the dictator's penchant for white sailor suits, complete with metal ribbons, plus his day-glow tracksuits, loud print shirts, and his latest accessory, a vintage leather flying helmet. The magazine calls him the most unabashed dresser on the world stage. One who draws

upon the influences of Lacroix, Liberace, Phil Spector for hair, Snoopy, and Idi Amin. By the 2000s, by the time Libya had been rehabilitated, his image had shifted a little and he was coming from the cold. There was still a lot of fascination with him, certainly in the media, but this vilification turned to ridicule. People would always mention his fashion sense and his flamboyant dress and the clothes he would wear. He was a flamboyant character. He loved the theatrical.

He loved to shop. There was an Arab summit in Tunisia in the mid-2000s. And to show his disdain for all his fellow Arab leaders, he just pushed his chair back, got out a cigarette in the middle of the summit, lit up, and sat there puffing so disdainfully at his fellow Arab leaders. It was never dull studying Gaddafi. But of course, you know, underneath all of that was a very brutal, repressive dictator. I don't think it was very funny if you were sitting in Libya. But to the outside world, he was entertaining and flamboyant and shocking.

You never knew what you were going to get. When he first took power in 69, Qaddafi was straight-laced looking. He was rather dapper, actually, when his regime first ascended to power. He wore military uniforms. He was very clean cut. He was clean shaven. The other Arab leaders at the time had particular looks. Gamal Abdel Nasser and Enver al-Sadat,

they wore men that primarily wore suits and ties, punctuated by occasionally wearing military uniforms if they were at a military parade and things like that. And then you had in the Assad dynasty in Syria, that was a suit and tie regime. And so I think Gaddafi, he rejected a lot of the, I guess, sort of fashion trends of the other Arab nationalist leaders.

Saddam Hussein even occasionally wore a suit and tie. He would go between military uniform, suit and tie, desert shake. I remember a Saddam Hussein poster where he looks like a tourist in Florida, where he's wearing sort of a Panama hat and a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. I think it was kind of a thing at that time. And I recall actually when I was covering the conflict in Benghazi in 2011, by the time I crossed the border from Egypt, all the various visages of Gaddafi had all been defaced. But from what I could make of them, Gaddafi was in a lot of different outfits, and he had a lot of different sunglasses. He had different sunglasses on different posters, different murals in Benghazi. There were different looks.

And this is a really common trait in dictators. You know, they change their fashion. Their artistic minions have to go create a new mural or they have to create new posters. While the Vanity Fair item is tongue-in-cheek, it shows just how far Gaddafi has come. He is incredibly vain by all accounts, changing his outfit several times a day. He tells a pair of Australian reporters, Whatever I wear becomes a fad.

I wear a certain shirt, and suddenly everyone's wearing it. There's also evidence of plastic surgery. As if his part was scripted by Ian Fleming, Gaddafi enlists an all-female Amazonian bodyguard squad, dressed in camouflage fatigues, who accompany him at all times. There's his voluptuous Ukrainian nurse. And then there's his Bedouin tent. No state visit from Paris to Brussels

to Moscow is complete without Gaddafi's minders flying in first to pitch it near a host's official residence. Gaddafi eschews traditional hospitality to sleep on the canvas. In 2009,

while attending a United Nations summit, he is denied pitching permission by local authorities in Bedford, New York, after trying to set up on land owned by property developer Donald Trump. Straight out of the Bond villain handbook, the tent's fabric is said to be bulletproof. Gaddafi even carries a special hand-crafted 9mm Browning automatic pistol, a golden gun. After his death, the talk will turn sinister. It's said that Gaddafi had forced sexual relations with some of the female guards. There are rumours of his love for drink and cocaine,

of his penchant for Berlusconi-style bonga-bonga parties. There are murmurings of sex slavery at the Gaddafi compound, of a secret tunnel to female dorm rooms at Tripoli University. It's claimed that on visits to schools, he would nominate barely adolescent girls to be removed for his pleasure, and who would never be seen again. Accusations exist that he was a rapist on an industrial scale. Looking back, it's hard to discern what exactly happened, though much of this, as the experts say, has been

alleged by the rebels. Like the story about him keeping the heads of executed foes in a freezer, taking them out to look at on occasion. So there were bodies found in freezers, including opposition figures. The whole thing about the female bodyguards and the mystique of that and all of this. And, you know, that was part of Gaddafi's presentation. There's no doubt that he was very abusive towards women. And there are many stories of his goons, you know, selecting beautiful young women at universities and that to come and meet the leader. I have to say that there's no doubt that some of that happened, but I think it's just a little bit over the top because it ties into that very sensationalist, lurid Gaddafi and women, his female bodyguards, the whole kind of sensational kind of thing. I think this was all part of the caricature. I mean, Gaddafi was quite interesting when it came to women. He had quite progressive views on women. I think he once said many years ago,

like, a woman can wear a bikini and be virtuous, but she can wear a hijab and not be virtuous. So he would encourage women to join his military forces, and he was quite pro women being allowed more space. That didn't sit very well with the Libyan population. That's conservative. It's traditional, even by regional standards. And I think people found it really shocking

that he would have women, Amazonian God or whatever you want to call them. On one level, he was more progressive than his own citizens when it came to women's rights. I mean, I think one has to be a bit careful about what comes out after his death, but I think it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that kind of thing was going on. I heard stories about his bodyguard who would sometimes be raped by him. And he was a nasty individual, but I don't know the extent. There is one dark secret that Gaddafi cannot dodge. And ultimately, it's the one that will

bring him down. Abu Salim Prison is a miserable concrete warren on the southern outskirts of Tripoli. Mindful of his reputation as a butcher and of the façade he's now presenting to the outside world as reformer, Gaddafi has eased off on the executions of late. Instead, he's sending his opponents to fester here. Abu Salim Prison was the most notorious prison in Gaddafi-era Libya. It was a prison for political dissidents, and it was a prison that occupied for decades a very particular place in the Libyan imagination. I think it's impossible to overstate what Abu Salim meant to Libyans throughout Gaddafi's regime. Even the name, people feared it. People didn't want to mention the name. It was something that became, if you like, a byword for everything that Libyans

feared of the regime. So within Abu Salim, you had thousands of political dissidents, and they were very wide range. Some of them were people who had been accused of plotting a coup against Gaddafi at different periods of his regime. Others were writers, artists, and intellectuals, many of them leftists who had been swept up in purges of suspected opposition figures. And then another cohort were jihadists, Libyans who had fought in Afghanistan, some of whom had fought in Iraq after 2003, who also tried to challenge Gaddafi militarily. I'm very often struck in Libya today that so many men spend time in Abu Salim that it's very common to find men now in Libya in their 40s, 50s, and 60s

who spent considerable periods in Abu Salim, were basically detained without trial. Some of them will joke, actually, that 10 years was average for somebody who was put in Abu Salim. 10 years was the amount of time that Jumu'ah Bukhleb spent within Abu Salim's walls. Before I went to university, I was involved in writing. I always liked to be a writer and showed some talent and started publishing some of my poems and short stories. But also, I started sending my writing to be published abroad in Cairo, in Beirut, wherever there is a chance. I have my friends who are young writers like me. We are politically active.

But it was rubbish. There's nothing. are politically active. But it was rubbish. There's nothing. We're just young writers, and we meet, we go out for a walk, we go for picnics,

sometimes dinner here, lunch there. Went to Benghazi for one week to read our poems and short stories. The third day they came, the revolutionary committees, and they got into the hall. The audience, people watching, the revolutionary committees, and they got into the hall.

The audience, people watching, they locked the exits and started beating us. The first year in prison, it was okay because we were in a civil prison under supervision of the police. But the shock happened when we were being taken, moved to the central prison in Tripoli. That prison was built by the Italians. We were put in the military wing, where you're under the military police. And there was nothing there, even a toothbrush or anything. And they gave us a hard time. They really gave us a hard time. They really gave us hard time.

In cells built for two, three or four men are now crammed two, three, four times that number. The desert heat, often well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, is insufferable. Men can barely move. Disease and malnutrition are rife. Once a week or once two weeks, they came and malnutrition are rife. Once a week, or once two weeks, they came and took us to have a shower. No medical care. Everything is built to make

your life miserable. It's dirty, filthy, no air. We're never given a visit. For years, without a visit. We never allowed a family visit. Every three months, they give you a piece of paper with three lines in it. You have to write what you want to your family to tell them that you're still alive and please can you get me some cigarettes and that's it.

Appeals for basic food and sanitation are repeatedly thwarted. Under such circumstances, the prisoners have nothing to lose. Enough, they say, is enough. On June 28th, 1996, at around 4.40am, prisoners from cell block 4 take an extreme measure. They seize a guard who's bringing their meagre food rations. Armed with their hostage, hundreds of prisoners from blocks 3, 5 and 6 join in the protest, calling for an improvement in prison conditions. Guards open fire. Some people are killed. There are more hostages taken. There's a standoff.

Gaddafi's brother-in-law, the fearsome Abdullah Sanusi, is brought in to conduct negotiations. His team listens intently, while a prisoner delegation runs through a list of demands. Clean clothes, outside recreation, better medical care, family visits. And the right to have their cases heard before a court. Many of the prisoners are in Abu Salim without trial, some with no clue as to why they're even there in the first place. There seems for once to be progress. In the new spirit of conciliation, a fleet of buses awaits to take

away the most seriously ill. 120 men are helped on board. Eventually the prison population is released outside into the courtyards. Some inmates stand blinking in sunlight they haven't seen in years. They suck in the glorious fresh air. But it's a sham. Sanusi has positioned gunmen around the rooftops. Within seconds, grenades have been lobbed into the crowd. Amid the carnage, the survivors run, duck and seek shelter. The men with the Kalashnikovs finish off the rest. Around 1270 prisoners are massacred, including a summary execution of all those on the buses. The grey walls of Abu Salim are now spattered bright red. The stench of death will linger for weeks.

The bodies are taken away in wheelbarrows and buried in trenches, covered over with cement. The prisoners of Abu Salim have all been disappeared. For years, rumours will persist as to what might have happened at Abu Salim. Something went on. But amid a massive cleanup operation, no word is forthcoming. When I was in Libya for the first time in February 2011, at the beginning of the uprising against Gaddafi, it was the first time I heard the story of Abu Salim. The Gaddafi regime did not admit or acknowledge these killings until almost a decade later. Many of the families of the men who perished

in that massacre believed their relatives were still alive throughout that time. Relatives will continue visiting the jail well into the 2000s, dropping off food parcels, disallowed from seeing the inmates in person, unaware that their husbands, their sons, have been dead for a decade. Though the regime persists in its denial that the massacre ever took place, there are international bodies beginning to raise concern, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. To ordinary Libyans in the later Gaddafi years,

Abu Salim becomes a byword for terror. In 2007, in a move led by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, there is eventual grudging admission by the government that yes, something may have happened in Abu Salim. But there is no real sense of closure, no graves, no death certificates, no real record. Mothers, fathers and family members regularly gather to hold vigils. They light candles, clutching photographs of the missing, still in hope that they might be alive. Right now, in the mid-2000s, the families of the victims of Abu Salim are starved of justice.

A movement forms around them. At this point, they have no inkling that this movement will ultimately hasten Gaddafi's end. It was the protests by those families that were essentially the spark that lit the uprising, what Libyans call the revolution of 2011 against Gaddafi. The massacre in 1996 proved to be Gaddafi's unraveling because it was the spark for the uprising that ousted him. In the next episode of Real Dictators, in the final part of the Colonel Gaddafi story, a young lawyer from Benghazi becomes the leader of the Colonel Gaddafi story. A young lawyer from Benghazi becomes the leader of the Abu Salim campaign.

In so doing, he is initiating events that will accelerate at an extraordinary rate. Before long, Muammar Gaddafi, the man who has ruled Libya for four decades, will be a fugitive on the run. The erstwhile strongman will meet the grisliest end perhaps of any dictator, as the people decide in the most emphatic way imaginable that enough is enough. That's next time on Real Dictators. Real Dictators was presented by me, Paul McGann. The Colonel Gaddafi story was written and produced by

Jeff Dawson. The show is created by Pascal Hughes Produced by Joel Dudell Editing and music by Oliver Baines and Dory McCauley Sound design, mix and mastering by Tom Pink

Editing and additional effects by George Tapp Follow Noiser Podcasts on Twitter for news about upcoming series. If you haven't already, follow us wherever you listen to your favourite shows or check us out at realdictators.com Tune in on Wednesdays for new episodes.