The leader de facto of Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi.Image via Wikipedia
Before he joined Libya's slaughter, Gaddafi's son Saif was celebrated by Westerners as a liberal reformer. Judith Miller on how he used money to fool the West. Plus, full coverage of the Libyan uprising.
He was so smooth in his Brioni suits and cashmere zip-up sweaters. His English was fluent, his manner easy. He spoke of civil society and democracy, the subject of his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics. Through American consultants, he promoted openness at home, counter-terrorism abroad, and headed a major charity. He dabbled in art, painting a little himself and displaying the work of others.
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He even met secretly with Israelis-journalists, academics, and government officials in Europe, knowing that they would rush to share what he had said with the officials he hoped to impress in Washington.
Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi presented well. But last week, the world saw a different man, a crude version of the cosmetic, well-polished act of a politician. Mimicking his fox-like crazy dad, Muammar Gaddafi's son warned that the family would fight until the last "man, the last woman, the last bullet."
What was suddenly exposed was the ruthless son of a brutal, desperate dictator determined to retain power after 42 years. Saif Qadaffi al-Islam, which in Arabic means "sword of Islam," had been forced to choose between the good of his country and that of his family, clan, and tribe. Inevitably, perhaps, he had chosen the latter.
"Tragically, but fatefully," wrote Professor David Held, Saif's academic adviser during his four years at L.S.E. and the head of a department that had benefited from a 1.5 million pound gift from Saif's Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, his protégé had "made the wrong judgment."
An embarrassed LS.E. announced that the school would "reconsider" its links to Libya "as a matter of urgency," would "stop new activities" under the program, and review what to do with the 300,000 pounds the charity had already bestowed. "The man giving that speech wasn't the Saif I had got to know well over those years," Prof. Held explained.
Now a debate has erupted over whether Saif wrote his thesis himself or whether it was ghosted.
Sarah Leah Witson, the normally tough director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, could also not hide her disappointment in the man who only a year ago had helped her hold an unprecedented press conference in Tripoli to publicize her group's report on Libya's human rights abuses and prospects for reform.