The capture of Gadhafi's son

Ismail Zitouni  /  Reuters

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, second right, is pictured standing in a plane in Zintan on Saturday.

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian

ZINTAN, Libya — The chic black sweater and jeans were gone. So too the combat khaki T-shirt of his televised last stand in Tripoli. Designer stubble had become bushy black beard after months on the run.

But the rimless glasses, framing those piercing eyes above that straight fine nose, gave him away despite the flowing nomad robes held close across his face.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, doctor of the London School of Economics, one-time reformer turned scourge of the rebels against his dictator father, was now a prisoner, bundled aboard an old Libyan air force transport plane near the oil-drilling outpost of Obari, deep in the Sahara desert.
The interim government's spokesman billed it as the "final act of the Libyan drama." But there would be no closing soliloquy from the lead player, scion of the dynasty that Moammar Gadhafi, self-styled "king of kings," had once hoped might rule Africa.
Video: Gadhafi's son captured without fight  A Reuters reporter aboard the flight approached the 39-year-old prisoner as he huddled on a bench at the rear of the growling, Soviet-era Antonov. The man who held court to the world's media in the early months of the Arab Spring was now on a 90-minute flight bound for the town of Zintan near Tripoli. He sat frowning, silent and seemingly lost in thought for part of the way, nursing his right hand, bandaged around the thumb and two fingers. At other times he chatted calmly with his captors and even posed for a picture.
In the dead of night Gadhafi's run had come to an end just a few hours earlier, at dead of night on a desert track, as he and a handful of trusted companions tried to thread their way through patrols of former rebel fighters intent on blocking their escape over the border.

Reuters TV  /  Reuters

Saif al-Islam, son of late former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, sits after his capture, with his fingers wrapped in bandages and his legs covered with a blanket, at an undisclosed location, in this photograph aired on Free Libya TV on Saturday.

"At the beginning he was very scared. He thought we would kill him," said Ahmed Ammar, one of the 15 fighters who captured Gadhafi. The fighters, from Zintan's Khaled bin al-Waleed Brigade, intercepted the fugitives' two 4x4 vehicles 40 miles out in the desert. "But we talked to him in a friendly way and made him more relaxed and we said, 'We won't hurt you'."More >