Did Saadi Gadhafi Kill Footballer #9?

Did Saadi Gadhafi kill Soccer Star #9?

TRIPOLI | Thu Oct 13, 2011

(Reuters) - Libya's interim leaders have approved a request to open an investigation into Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi over the murder of a footballer who played for the national team in the 1980s, prosecutor Abdullah Banoun said on Wednesday.

Banoun told people gathered at the player's club for a memorial service that the National Transitional Council (NTC) had agreed the investigation into the murder of former midfielder and coach Basheer Al-Rryani could go ahead.

Al-Rryani was known as 'number nine' because of a law forbidding any players but Saadi Gaddafi, who had a brief career as a soccer player, from being mentioned by name. He was tortured and killed in December 2005.

During the Gaddafi-era there had been no independent judiciary and no attempt had been made to investigate the role of Saadi Gaddafi, who is also the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant, the prosecutor said.

After the uprising against his father's rule, Saadi Gaddafi sought refuge in neighbouring Niger, where the government says it has him under surveillance but says it is unlikely to extradict him any time soon to a country where he would not be given a fair trial and risked the death penalty.

Saadi is accused of leading military units responsible for crackdowns against protesters and misappropriating property.

Al-Rryani had coached at Saadi Gaddafi's club for several years after playing for Libya's national team between 1975-1983.

Friends attending the memorial remembered Al-Rryani as an outspoken critic of Gaddafi's regime and said he had been attacked on one occasion before his death.
"Two years before he was killed he told Saadi he was part of a dictatorship and had corrupted Libya. After that he was beaten and left outside his house," said Dr Hussein Rammali, a former team-mate who attended Wednesday's ceremony.

Rammali said Al-Rryani's family had last seen the star at Saadi Gaddafi's seaside resort four days before his body was returned to their home.

(Reporting by Jessica Donati and Ali Shuaib; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Thursday, September 29, 2011, 11:19
Interpol wants Saadi Gaddafi for 'football crimes'

World police body Interpol issued an arrest notice today for fallen Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi son Saadi for alleged crimes while head of the country's football federation.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110929/world/interpol-wants-saadi-gaddafi-for-football-crimes.386986

The new Libyan authorities requested the notice against Saadi, believed to be in Niger, "for allegedly misappropriating properties through force and armed intimidation when he headed the Libyan Football Federation," Interpol said in a statement.

Saadi, 38, was last seen in Niger and the red notice calls particularly on countries in the region to help locate and arrest him "with a view to returning him to Libya where an arrest warrant for him has been issued," Interpol said.

"As the commander of military units allegedly involved in the repression of demonstrations by civilians during Libya's uprising, Saadi Gaddafi is also subject to a United Nations travel ban and assets freeze," it said.

Interpol said it was the first red notice issued at the request of the National Transitional Council, with previous such notices issued for Muammar Gaddafi himself and other members of his family at the request of the International Criminal Court.

Niger's government said on September 16 that it would not send Saadi back to Libya, but could hand him over to another jurisdiction.

"With regard to (our) international obligations, we cannot send someone back there where he has no chance of receiving a fair trial and where he could face the death penalty," government spokesman Marou Amadou said.

"On the other hand, if this gentleman or any other person is wanted by an independent court ... which has universal competence over the crimes for which he is pursued, Niger will do its duty," he added.

Saadi, the third of Gaddafi's seven sons, renounced a football career in Italy in 2004 to join the army, where he led an elite unit.

He was captain of his national team and president of the Libyan football association and remained a grotesque symbol of ties between Libya and Italian football.

When he was 20, he trained with Italian clubs Juventus and Lazio. He remained a shareholder in Juventus, the legendary club by virtue of being the chairman of Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company, which holds 7.5 percent shares of Juventus which are now frozen.

He also tried to buy Lazio in 2002 after the collapse of Cirio food empire, which owned the club.

Too big, too slow, not strong enough technically, Saadi was not at the level required for the Italian first class division football but was recruited by Perugia in 2003 for marketing reasons.

His first game was a sensation in the media, but he trampled the lawn only once in two seasons (2003-2005).

He had barely kicked a ball when he was suspended by Perugia after testing positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid.

Those days he used to stay in a five-star hotel in the centre of the city, occupying an entire floor, with a suite for 20 people.

He made few friends in the Libyan national team either.

"We felt hindered. He was still the son of the head of the state. He was not on equal footing," goalkeeper Samir Abboud recalls, affirming that Saadi could not even pass a ball.


Wednesday, September 14, 2011
AFP

Saadi Gaddafi: The failed footballer and fleeing soldier
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110914/world/Saadi-Gaddafi-The-failed-footballer-and-fleeing-soldier.384659

Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi, an ex-footballer with a playboy reputation, has turned up in Niger, more than two weeks after his mother and three siblings sought refuge in Algeria.

The whereabouts of the deposed strongman and his most charismatic son, Seif al-Islam, however, remains a mystery three weeks after they went into hiding when rebel fighters overran Tripoli and captured large swathes of the country.

Col Gaddafi’s wife Safiya, two sons Mohammed and Hannibal and daughter Aisha escaped to neighbouring Algeria on August 29, leading to speculation that other family members would follow.

Saadi, however, followed other regime figures and officials in crossing the desert into Niger, arriving there on Sunday, according to the Niamey government.
Born in 1973, Saadi, Col Gaddafi’s third son, unsuccessfully tried a career in Italian football before heading an elite unit in the Libyan army.

In the initial weeks of the anti-Gaddafi uprising, Saadi was optimistic that his father would remain in power.

“My father would stay as the big father who advises,” he told the Financial Times in an interview in February. “After this positive earthquake, we have to do something for Libya,” he said. “We have to bring in new blood to govern our country.”

Saadi devoted part of his life to football.

He was captain of his national team and president of the Libyan football association and remained a grotesque symbol of ties between Libya and Italian football.

When he was 20, he trained with Italian clubs Juventus and Lazio. He remained a shareholder in Juventus, the legendary club by virtue of being the chairman of Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company, which holds 7.5 per cent shares of Juventus which are now frozen.

He also tried to buy Lazio in 2002 after the collapse of Cirio food empire, which owned the club.

Too big, too slow, not strong enough technically, Saadi was not at the level required for the Italian first class division football but was recruited by Perugia in 2003 for marketing reasons.

He had barely kicked a ball when he was suspended by Perugia after testing positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid.

Those days he used to stay in a five-star hotel in the centre of the city, occupying an entire floor, with a suite for 20 people.

He made few friends in the Libyan national team either. “We felt hindered. He was still the son of the head of the state. He was not on equal footing,” goalkeeper Samir Abboud recalls, affirming that Saadi could not even pass a ball.

After anti-Gaddafi forces overran Tripoli, family albums dug up from Saadi’s seaside Tripoli chalet tell of Western nightclubs and luxury.

In the photos Saadi appears to live up to his reputation as a playboy. “I am forever grateful and blessed to have met you! May all your dreams in this New Year come true and keep doing what you are doing. It works. You can move mountains,” writes a New Yorker Linda, in a dedication to Saadi.

After he hung his football boots, Saadi made a career in the Libyan army, heading an elite military unit.

Despite the setbacks suffered by the Gaddafi forces in the initial weeks of the uprising, Saadi was unmoved and promised that any territory lost would be regained “sooner or later”.

“There are people protesting against my father’s rule, it is normal. Everybody needs to be free to express their opinion,” he told the Financial Times, downplaying the fact that many Libyan diplomats around the world had quit their posts.

“I don’t care about these guys,” Saadi said. “My diplomacy is to be honest and tell the truth.”

On August 21 he announced he was ready to give himself up “if my surrender stops the spilling of blood”.

Published February 28th, 2011 - 18:16 GMT

Gaddafi set to quit Udinese

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/4596716.stm

Al Saadi Gaddafi's Italian football career, which has included just one Serie A match, looks set to end.

The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been offered a prestigious government position in his home country and is thinking very seriously of leaving Udinese, his spokesman, Gianluca Di Carlo, said Monday.

"He should decide in the next few days," Di Carlo said.

"It's not a soccer problem, it's a political problem. Udinese has always treated him very well."

Gaddafi has not played in any official matches since joining Udinese in June 2005, appearing in only a preseason friendly against Inter Milan.

His only Serie A appearance came with Perugia in 2003.

Gaddafi was suspended in November 2003 after testing positive for a performance-enhancing steroid.

He denied intentionally doping, saying medicine he took for back pain probably caused the positive result.
Di Carlo said Gaddafi has already been away from Udinese for two months.

SAADI GADDAFI EXPLODED 280 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR ON COCAINE, PROSTITUTES, ENTOURAGE, CARRIED LYBIAN EMBASSY BRIEFCASES FULL OF CASH.

Posted by Wayourou Zadi-Pauyo on August 23, 2011 RADICAL8.com
http://radical8.com/2011/08/23/saadi-gaddafi-exploded-280-million-dollars-a-year-on-cocaine-prostitutes-entourage-carried-lybian-embassy-supplied-briefcases-of-cash/

Inside the world of Gaddafi’s son Saadi

Suitcases stuffed with banknotes, luxury hotels and The Pussycat Dolls
By Glenda Kwek for Stuff.co.nz

‘I was dancing on the stage and as I turned I saw him sitting there, in a white suit with blonde highlights in his hair, just staring at me.’

A former nightclub dancer says she had a six-year relationship with one of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s sons, who kept a “suitcase stuffed with thousands of banknotes” and splurged £170 million a year on a luxury lifestyle.

Paranoid: Saadi and Dafinka in the only picture she has of them, taken on Safari in Tanzania

Bulgarian Dafinka Mircheva said she met Saadi Gaddafi, the third son of the Libyan leader, when she was 21 at a Parisian nightclub in 2004, the Sunday Mail reported.
Gaddafi, now 37, took an instant liking to the young dancer as she performed on stage and asked her to “go with him to the Caribbean the next day on his jet”.

Mircheva said she refused, and Gaddafi flew to Paris every few weeks to try to pick her up, staying in expensive hotels in rooms costing £3500 a night. He lavished her with gifts, spending £20,000 on Bulgari jewellery.

During that time, Gaddafi was a professional player in Italy’s Serie A football league with the clubs Sampdoria, Udinese, Perugia, although he rarely played on the field.
Off the field, Gaddafi, a trained engineer and soldier, had more than six people travelling with him, include his own manservant Langy, Mircheva said. Wherever he went, “money was no object”.

“He would always have a black suitcase stuffed with thousands of banknotes. If he ran out, he would call the embassy and they would have more delivered to his hotel, ” she told the Mail.

“His entourage were mainly Libyans. He would call them all his servants. I told him many times not to tell people that. He told me: ‘I do what I want. I want to call them servants.’

“Sometimes he would slap them. He was quite good with me but with others he didn’t care. Once, he found a beggar in the centre of Paris and took him back to his hotel to entertain him.

“He would always have the biggest suite and pay for rooms for his servants. He would get very drunk and play loud music in the middle of the night. The rapper 50 Cent was his favourite.

“He would insist on being called Engineer Saadi. His brother would always be Doctor Mutassim.

“Another time, I went to his room at Plaza Athenee and found him sleeping in bed with another man. They were under the covers and their top halves were naked. I also saw him take drugs but only once. It was in the private room of a club and he offered me cocaine.”
Mircheva said she agreed to date Gaddafi a year after the pair first meant, and Gaddafi continued to splash out on luxury gifts, including a £25,000 Audemars Piguet watch, £25,000 in designer dresses and £10,000 just for dinner at a Russian restaurant in Paris.
On his birthday in 2007, he hired The Pussycat Dolls, whom Mircheva said was her favourite pop group, to perform at a villa in Cannes in front of 30 guests.

“Saadi will never look at the price. He doesn’t care. Someone else always pays the bill.”
But Mircheva said she refused to sleep with Gaddafi as “I knew he would sleep with lots of women … it drove him mad [that I didn't sleep with him]“.

Instead, in 2006, she said she asked him to free six Bulgarian nurses who had been arrested by Libyan authorities in 1999 for allegedly infecting children with HIV.

“Eventually he told me they would be freed during 2007, which they were. To this day I don’t know if they were released because of me or if they were going to be released anyway.”

US diplomatic cables written by US Ambassador Gene Cretz in Tripoli in 2009 and released by WikiLeaks described Gaddafi as a “black sheep made good” as he tried to set up an export free zone in western Libya.

“Saadi has a troubled past, including scuffles with police in Europe (especially Italy), abuse of drugs and alcohol, excessive partying, travel abroad in contravention of his father’s wishes.

“Creating the appearance of useful employment for al-[Gaddafi]‘s offspring has been an important objective for the regime.”

Gaddafi, along with his older brother Saif, is believed to have visited Sydney, Perth and Queensland over the past nine years and inspected property, although they are not believed to have bought any. He has also travelled to Australia with the Libyan football team, and was friends with former Socceroo Zeljko Kalac.

In the weeks before Libyan rebels took over the eastern city of Benghazi, Gaddafi said on local radio that he was commandant of the city.

Hounded: Dafinka says Saadi Gaddafi pursued her for six years but she refused to have sex, which 'drove him mad'

He later appeared at a pro-Gaddafi rally in the capital Tripoli to show that he had not been killed by the Benghazi protesters.

Last week, Gaddafi told the Financial Times he and Saif were working on a new constitution for Libya and that their father “would stay as the big father who advises”.

“Yes, there are people protesting against my father’s rule. It is normal. Everybody needs to be free to express their opinion,” he said in the telephone interview.

“After this positive earthquake, we have to do something for Libya. We have to bring in new blood to govern our country.”

He added: “The army is still very strong. If we hear anything, we will send some battalions. When people see the army, they will be afraid.”
Former nightclub dancer reveals how she had a ‘crazy’ six-year fling with Gaddafi’s son and watched as he blew millions

By MATT SANDY for THE DAILY MAIL
Last updated at 12:45 PM on 6th March 2011

Claims he kept suitcases stuffed with bank notes and spent £170m in a single year
He paid £500,000 for the Pussycat Dolls to perform live at his birthday party
Allegedly got wildly drunk, offered her cocaine and beat up his servants
Gleaming in a £5,000 white suit, the wealthy young Arab sat mesmerised as he watched a striking dancer gyrate at the Pink Paradise club in Paris. The girl turned and her long chestnut hair caught in a candle, setting it on fire.

The Arab waved desperately to alert her, saving her from serious damage.

Al-Saadi Gaddafi

The unlikely Samaritan was Saadi Gaddafi, the then 31-year-old third son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The girl, Bulgarian Dafinka Mircheva, then 21, says it was the start of a six-year relationship that gives a fascinating insight into his family.

Today, as Saadi helps his father cling to power in Libya in his role as an army colonel, she discloses how he squandered millions on his breathtakingly extravagant lifestyle.
Dafinka says his aides told her he spent £170 million a year on private jets, five-star hotels, supercars, lap-dancers, jewels and designer clothes.

‘Money was no object,’ she says. ‘He would always have a black suitcase stuffed with thousands of banknotes.

‘If he ran out, he would call the embassy and they would have more delivered to his hotel.’

She says he began a prolonged pursuit of her after that first meeting in 2004 – lavishing her with gifts and proposals of marriage – despite having a wife, the daughter of a commander in the Libyan military.

After she finally agreed to date him, Dafinka says Saadi paid £500,000 for her favourite pop group, The Pussycat Dolls, to perform for her at his birthday party in Cannes in the South of France.

She even made him help secure the release of six Bulgarian nurses being held in Libya, accused of plotting to infect 400 children with HIV.

But she says she also experienced the family’s darker side – and his servants claimed he slapped them. ‘I have no friends, only servants,’ he told her.

Dafinka says Saadi was banned from several five-star hotels and claims that once she walked in on the practising Muslim in bed with another man. Another time, she says he offered her cocaine. She also found him to be like an immature – if spoilt – child, who begged her constantly to love him and enjoyed nothing more than taking his entourage to Disneyland Paris.

Al-Saadi Gaddafi and his permanent entourage

She has provided letters apparently from Saadi and a photo of them on a safari trip. Her story is also backed by a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable posted on the WikiLeaks website.

Written by then-U.S. ambassador to Libya in 2009, it stated: ‘Saadi has a troubled past, including scuffles with police in Europe (especially Italy), abuse of drugs and alcohol, excessive partying [and] travel abroad in contravention of his father’s wishes.’

The couple are an unlikely match. She was born to modest parents, a glass-maker and civil servant, in communist Bulgaria. He is the third child of eight born to Libya’s all-powerful ruler.

But on an evening in May 2004, for very different reasons, they were both at the Pink Paradise club in a Paris business district.

Dafinka, who goes by the stage name Nikki, recalls: ‘I was dancing on the stage and as I turned I saw him sitting there, in a white suit with blonde highlights in his hair, just staring at me.’

For Saadi, it seems, it was love at first sight. Within minutes of being introduced, she says he agreed to pay £1,000-an-hour to talk to her in a private room – but he never asked her to undress.

She says: ‘He ordered Baileys for me and a gin and tonic and at first was coy about who he was. I had to tease it out of him. Eventually he told me his name was Gaddafi. Despite only knowing me for a few hours, he then asked me to go with him to the Caribbean the next day on his jet.’

Shocked, she says she refused. He promised to return.

‘I was dancing on the stage and as I turned I saw him sitting there, in a white suit with blonde highlights in his hair, just staring at me.’

A bizarre courtship began. Dafinka says Saadi would return to Paris by private jet every few weeks to woo her. He was playing football in Italy for Perugia, an ill-fated spell in the country that saw him signed by three clubs but barely play a match.
In Paris, she says he would hire two black limousines and a team of bodyguards. He would book a suite at the £3,500-a-night George V or Plaza Athenee hotels.
She says he would always have an entourage of at least half-a-dozen including his manservant Langy. At the club he would sit with her for hours. But, for more than a year, she says she would not agree to date him.

Saadi Gaddafi and model Vanessa Hessler

She says: ‘He was sweet, like a ten-year-old. He told me he was coming to Paris purely to see me. He would see me for three hours and beg me to go out with him. But I was worried about security, that something might happen to me. I was worried about his enemies and worried about him.’

Dafinka says he gave her a love letter on George V hotel notepaper which reads: ‘I fly with wings of love to you . . . I don’t want to lose this feeling . . . you waked me from inside after long time.’

Within a few months, says Dafinka, he gave her £20,000 of Bulgari jewellery – earrings, a ring and necklace made of white gold and studded with diamonds. Still she refused to date him.

She recalls: ‘Then, even though we were not even dating, he asked me to marry him. He said his father would not like it – and it would be difficult while he was still alive – but he still wanted to do it. I started to have feelings for him.

‘It’s a long time for someone to keep asking you out. After nearly a year and a half where nothing had happened to me, I felt safer.’

In October 2005, she agreed to a date. They saw the action film Four Brothers, starring Mark Wahlberg, at a £7 cinema on the Champs-Elysees.

‘He held my hand,’ says Dafinka.

Keen hunter: Saadi (left) with an impala he shot while on safari
Soon after, she says he promised her €50,000 (£43,000) as a gift.
Documents seen by The Mail on Sunday show a payment of €50,000 from an account in the British Virgin Islands. Later Saadi bought her a £25,000 Audemars Piguet watch.
Dafinka recalls: ‘After we started going out he came to Paris less frequently. We would go shopping or stay in his hotel suite and he would get drunk.

‘We sometimes slept in the same bed and kissed but I never had sex with him. I didn’t want to as I knew he would sleep with lots of women. And I knew the closer I got to him the more difficult it would be for me and that still scared me. It drove him mad.

‘In his room were black leather suitcases full of cash. He would have £150,000 at any one time.’
She says he bought her £25,000 designer dresses and spent £10,000 on dinner at Raspoutine, a Russian restaurant in Paris. He is said to have owned a purple Bugatti Veyron road car worth £1million.

‘Saadi will never look at the price. He doesn’t care. Someone else always pays the bill.’
She says his stays at hotels like the George V and Plaza Athenee were notorious.

‘Sweet’: Love letters Dafinka says Saadi Gaddafi sent her on George V hotel headed notepaper

‘He would always have the biggest suite and pay for rooms for his servants. He would get very drunk and play loud music in the middle of the night. The rapper 50 Cent was his favourite.

‘He loved vampire films and he sent a servant out to buy lamb ribs at 2am so he could cook them himself in the room. Other guests would complain about the noise and I believe he got banned from those hotels. Now he stays at Le Meurice, which has a soundproofed suite.’

Neither the George V or Plaza Athenee would comment on the claim that he was banned.
Dafinka claims her proximity to Saadi meant she saw both sides of his personality – the spoilt, autocratic multi-millionaire who considers himself royalty and the emotionally stunted boy.

‘His entourage were mainly Libyans. He would call them all his servants. I told him many times not to tell people that. He told me, “I do what I want. I want to call them servants.”

‘Sometimes he would slap them. He was quite good with me but with others he didn’t care. Once, he found a beggar in the centre of Paris and took him back to his hotel to entertain him.

‘He would always have the biggest suite and pay for rooms for his servants. He would get very drunk and play loud music in the middle of the night. The rapper 50 Cent was his favourite.’

‘He would insist on being called Engineer Saadi. His brother would always be Doctor Mutassim.

Italian super model Vanessa Hessler

‘Another time, I went to his room at Plaza Athenee and found him sleeping in bed with another man. They were under the covers and their top halves were naked. I also saw him take drugs but only once. It was in the private room of a club and he offered me cocaine.’
Other times, especially when they were alone, she says he could be sweet and childish.
‘He could be very funny. When you know how to handle him, he is like a baby.’
He loved Disneyland Paris and would often take a group there, once buying them all Pirates of the Caribbean T-shirts and demanding they wear them, like it or not.
Soon she decided to exploit these vulnerabilities for a positive end.

‘In 2006 he was still bugging me to marry him. Normally if I mentioned his father or his wife, this would put him off. But he kept coming back and begging me. So I gave him an ultimatum: I would like him to free the Bulgarian nurses.’

In 1999, Gaddafi’s regime had arrested six Bulgarian nurses and accused them of being agents of Israel’s Mossad agents who planned to infect 400 children with HIV.

Like father, like son: Despite his connections, Saadi did not like talking about his family, including his father, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi

Dafinka says: ‘It was widely seen as a conspiracy theory on Gaddafi’s part but his son seemed to believe it. But he said to show how much he loved me he would talk to his brother Saif, who was dealing with the case. Eventually he told me they would be freed during 2007, which they were. To this day I don’t know if they were released because of me or if they were going to be released anyway.’

At the time, it was reported they had been freed after a mission to Libya by Cecilia Sarkozy, then wife of French President Nicolas.

The most extravagant gift was yet to come.

‘In early 2007, he asked me who my favourite band were. I said The Pussycat Dolls. He said he would organise it so I could see them.’

For his birthday, she says he rented a £8,000-a-day Arabic-style villa in Cannes. As 30 guests enjoyed Cristal champagne, Lenôtre chocolates, caviar and cigars, The Pussycat Dolls played in front of the pool.

Two years later, the Dafinka and Saadi visited Tanzania for a week-long safari, staying in £600-a-night lodges. She says: ‘He killed an impala. I remember him asking, “What other gaming do you have for royalty?” He saw himself as the son of a king.’

It is from this trip that she has the only photo of them together. She says: ‘He is a very paranoid person. He doesn’t like pictures.’

She adds: ‘If you asked him about his family, he would get angry. If his father closed the tap there would be no money, so he is not going to say anything bad. Once, his wife came to Paris and he put her in one hotel and he stayed in a second.’

After Saadi stopped playing football in Italy – he made just two substitute appearances in four years with three Serie A clubs – Dafinka saw less of him and they grew apart.
She says: ‘When we saw each other last year he was moody and refused to talk. I have no idea why. I last saw him in November. With what’s happening in Libya, I don’t expect to hear from him again.

‘I feel bad for the people there. If they want freedom, give them freedom. Isn’t 41 years enough? But I do not link Saadi to what is happening there. It is his father who is doing all the damage.’

On learning how Saadi has been spending their money, most Libyans will doubtless violently disagree.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363413/My-crazy-year-fling-Gaddafi-s-son.html#ixzz1VuckZfVd



Tyrant on the team BY:OWEN SLOT From:The Times October 29, 2011 12:00AM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/tyrant-on-the-team/story-e6frg7mf-1226179922971

THE only time I went to Tripoli, I hung out with Ben Johnson. I also went to visit Saadi Gaddafi in his palace by the sea; as a gift, he gave me the heaviest, most tasteless watch I have ever seen and we discussed Libya's chances in the football World Cup and how he would handle the opposition defences.

Only despots and dictators can create stories such as these. Johnson was disappointingly dull, actually, and it was a shame to miss Diego Maradona, who had been part of Gaddafi's entourage but had flown out a couple of days earlier. Oh yes, Carlos Bilardo, Argentina's World Cup-winning coach in 1986, was hanging around the hotel, too, but preferred to keep to himself.

The reason for all this? Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's third son was a world-class footballer. We never met anyone who said that he was world-class apart from Saadi himself, but given who he was, it seemed no one was foolish enough to say he wasn't.
It also helped that he was the leading administrator in the Libyan FA and that he owned one of Tripoli's leading clubs, Al-Ahli. These were advantages that may explain how he got to play up front (where else?) for Al-Ahli and captain the national side.


So, exciting times in Libyan football. Trying to qualify for the 2002 World Cup finals was a big project and, with that in mind, in January 2000, Gaddafi agreed to meet.
He was taking it so seriously, he explained, that he had hired Maradona as a consultant. Maradona worked particularly on close skills with Gaddafi and told him that what he really lacked were strength and speed.

That was where Johnson came in; Gaddafi took Maradona at his word and employed Johnson as his personal trainer. A reported pound stg. 240,000 fee was just about enough to keep Johnson smiling for 90 days in a Muslim city for which he could find no empathy whatsoever.

So Johnson remained holed up in the Grand Hotel, got through a DVD or two a day, trained Gaddafi and kept his views to himself.

Eleven years on, and with Gaddafi now said to be hiding out in Niger, it is probably not letting Johnson down too much by breaking the confidence and revealing that he did not much rate the dictator's son as an athlete. Something to do with never having done a hard day's physical work in his life.

But these were strange times. Johnson was 38 and seemed convinced he was going to compete, eight months later, in the Sydney Olympics (he didn't). And Gaddafi, who could have anything he wanted, had no private workout facility and would train with Johnson in one of Tripoli's finer gyms.

Outside, he would park his big black BMW, which did not distinguish him much from other punters except that by the handbrake he kept something ornate that turned out to be a sword.

One night we were invited to Gaddafi's palace, which was not mesmerisingly ornate, and met him in a large, orange dining room that had a cinema-size TV screen on which he followed European football, and two whopping fish tanks. Post-liberation reports suggest that the palace probably contained whopping quantities of gay porn, too, although he kept that to himself.

What he did share was his disappointment at being too busy to play European club football and his hopes for what Bilardo could achieve as national coach. "If he thinks I am a good player, he'll put me in the national team," he said.

Less than six months later, Bilardo and Libya went their separate ways. And no, Libya did not qualify for the 2002 World Cup, although at the time it was possible to appreciate the joke about how the dictator's son made himself a professional footballer - even if the legion of stories about referees and linesmen and penalty decisions all going his way did seem to be pushing it a bit.

It even remained somewhat amusing when he cleared his busy schedule and played a game each for Perugia and Udinese in Serie A - it helps when your father is buddies with Silvio Berlusconi - and it became funnier the longer he stayed there and the longer his coaches refused to pick him. Those three years in Italy produced 26 minutes of football in two appearances off the bench and in one of those he did not actually touch the ball.
Even Australia has a connection with Saadi Gaddafi. Former Socceroos, AC Milan and Perugia goalkeeper Zeljko Kalac, now an assistant at A-League club Sydney FC, got to know him well during their time together at Perugia. He was instrumental in getting Gaddafi and the Libyan national team to Australia for a training camp and a game against a NSW select side in 2005.

"He's been on my case for ages about coming out to Australia," Kalac said at the time.
"He's got this impression it's a paradise and who am I to argue? He's that laid-back he could easily be an Aussie.

"He's been desperate to get there for a while, and we've often talked about making a few investments. Whether they would be in football, I don't know. He's a spur-of-the-moment guy; if he likes what he hears, he acts. A million bucks here and there isn't going to send him broke, is it?"

Gaddafi charmed the media at a press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney, telling stories about his friend Kalac. "During the early days (at Perugia), we had pre-season training in the mountains and I invited him to my room so I could get some advice," Gaddafi recalled.

"I asked him what I had to do to be a success as a player in Italy. He told me to go home and forget it!"

That was the last Australia saw of him. He did not play in the game because of a bad back. In fact, he didn't even attend.

There are countless stories of abuse of power that cease to amuse. Since the liberation of Benghazi, reports have been heard of the friction between Al-Ahli and the club of the same name in Benghazi, of how the Benghazi players once walked off the pitch after two penalties and a dodgy goal went against them but how Gaddafi's security guards forced them back on.

Then it escalated: how Benghazi fans protested on the streets and burnt photographs of Saadi, how 31 of them were arrested and imprisoned on three- to 10-year sentences and how bulldozers mowed down the club's training ground and offices.

That is your football story from Benghazi. The other one is the more recent military version: of how Gaddafi was sent back there by his father to lead his troops and how it was he who gave the word for them to open fire on protesters.

That blingy watch, by the way, was sold long ago in a charity auction. Its donor is now seemingly in refuge in Niger and on Interpol's most-wanted list.
Additional reporting: Ray Gatt