Saadi Gaddafi is “a fun guy” and not a war criminal, says his bodyguard.
Libya in Vitro
After Libya’s revolution in 2011, tens of thousands of citizens wounded in bloody guerilla battles needed good hospitals and doctors the war-torn country didn’t have. As a quick fix, the interim government established a medical program for Libya’s patients, sending them to some 44 countries with the promise that their medical bills would be covered. And because of its historic ties with Libya and its high-quality, under-utilized medical facilities, Jordan quickly became the top destination for Libya’s post-revolution wounded. Beginning soon after the death of Gaddafi in October 2011, Amman’s hospitals and hotels saw an influx of Libyans—a dozen per week were arriving at one point—and soon, a mounting tab of IOUs from Libya.
But the war-wounded weren’t the only ones getting a free ride. Amidst the dysfunction of the transitional government, many non-fighting Libyans took advantage of the system, using loopholes to receive treatment for non-war related injuries. Among some 60,000 total patients, an estimated majority of Libyans took advantage of Jordan’s expertise in dentistry, plastic surgery and in vitro fertilization. If you’re in the market for getting pregnant with a test tube, it turns out there are few better times for medical tourism than after your dictator of thirty years is removed through a violent uprising. Apart from Israel (which happens to provide free IVF to its citizens, all the time), Jordan boasts some of the best IVF care in the Middle East. In all, thousands of Libyan women were treated for IVF, some of them twice if need be, on the government’s bill.
ON THE ROAD WITH LIBYA’S LIONS OF THE DESERT
The smoke from Taha’s massive cone joint flowed through the cabin of our silver Hummer. The A/C was on high and blew long fingers of smoke to the back seat. We were all mellow. Taha’s aviator sunglasses hid his tiny black eyes as he cranked the volume on the Arabic Reggae beat until it became painful. Then he floored it.
Jesus Christ, he’s PTSDing again, I thought as the speedometer cranked past 100 mph.
“He has to drive fast here,” Hamid said in flat Arabic-accented Canadian English. “This is where the snipers were, and if we didn’t do this we were dead.”
The Hummer slalomed as we sped towards the sea west of Misrata. The dark asphalt was covered with sand on the edges, and I prayed Taha could keep the car from sliding out of control as it swung side to side on the twisting road. I kept thinking about what my father had taught me about a tire’s contact patch and how small it is; his father had been a champion racecar driver in Havana in 1920. I’ll never get to see Havana I thought sadly, convinced Taha was about to roll the car.
A white Mazda pickup appeared over a rise, coming straight at us. Taha expertly pulled right and slid the Hummer around him, lining us up on the sea road. We sat there for a second, staring at two T-55 tanks, burnt hulks that sat guard on the road like ghosts. Taha sat crouched in the driver’s seat, his sunglasses barely over the steering wheel as sweat covered his brow.
Hamid dialed back the music as Taha leaned back and we continued to Misrata.
“See, I told you he has to drive fast here.”
“Hashish no problem. Whiskey no problem. Music problem.” Taha said. His English was meager and talking to him was like conversing with George “The Animal” Steel. I looked at Lucian my cameraman.
“You get that?” I asked.
“Got it,” he said, sitting up next to me, taking the camera down from his face, rubbing it against his perfectly trimmed beard. At first I thought he was lying down next to me fearing for his life until I realized he was angling for a shot of Taha, the joint, and the speedometer.
***
I was back in the US after two trips to Libya in three months when I pitched Dan Rather with the idea of doing a documentary on Muammar Qaddafi’s death. I used to be one of the UN’s war crimes investigators in Libya after the war. I primarily looked at NATO’s bombing. But we were short staffed, and so I was also given the lead on investigating Qaddafi’s death. The UN wanted to know if he was “EJE’d” or Extra-judicially Executed as they say in international legal circles. It was an odd request I thought. Who gives a shit if he was EJE’d I asked? Should we give the guy a medal? If someone popped Bashar al-Assad earlier in Syria wouldn’t we all just be better off? Maybe so, but this was serious stuff so I went about it seriously doing two trips to Libya—November 2011 and January 2012—along with a team of about a dozen war crimes investigators.
Working for the UN is funny. Everyone thinks we have some great karmic authority. It is as if people say, oh, it’s the UN, how can we help? The reality is sometimes you show up at a site and an old bespectacled Libyan in fatigues and a beret tells you, “Take your fucking paper and shove it up your ass,” in perfect English. We drive around in huge white Land Rovers that scream “HERE I AM, SHOOT ME” and we are often confined to base for security reasons while our colleagues and friends in human rights organizations and the press call us from shisha bars on the beach in Tripoli telling us “It’s safe. Get your ass out here.”
We flew to Libya via Rome in November, shortly after Qaddafi was killed. There were 12 investigators, a chief of security, and a close protection guy that had the guns. The chief of security was a massive dark-skinned Brazilian and the close protection guy was a dashingly handsome Tunisian who never stopped smiling. We flew to Rome from Geneva when the Italian police showed up. It was a buffet of heavily accented English.
“What do you mean no guns?” the chief of security asked.
“Prego, we are sorry but there is a UN arms embargo on Libya. You must send your weapons back.”
“But we ARE the UN.”
Waiting for al-Quaeda: Will radical Islam take over in Libya? Watch Part 1 of our report from the ground.
Public Opinion: Should We Have Been Allowed To See Gaddafi’s Dead Face?
After months of fighting in Libya following the Arab Spring uprisings, Muammar Gaddafi is dead. What his legacy is in the annals of history has yet to be determined. We can say that there will likely be footnotes in his sections of history books dedicated to explaining his crazy faces and obsession with fancy eyewear. I’m not sure why but it seemed a crucial aspect of being a dictator in the latter half of the 20th century to wear designer sunglasses at all times. I’m not sure if it’s a wink and a nod to how filthy rich these guys get by embezzling the guts out of their already-strained public coffers, or if there’s some sort of inter-dictator sunglass competition going on. It may just be that they can’t stand to view the glare of their starving populaces unless their eyes are shielded by thousands of dollars worth of Prada and Hennessy. Until some sociologists dedicate themselves to sunglasses research, we’ll just have to decide on our own. To kickstart the scholarly debate, I’ve rounded up my top eight shades-wearing dictators from recent history.
“One 15-year-old boy I met was preparing a Grad-missile truck for battle. Beaming, he wondered whether I could “ask Clinton and Obama for new weapons” so that they could beat Gaddafi and he could fulfill his dream of playing for the Miami Heat or the Dallas Mavericks.”
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