Gaddafi he was
HOW can one love a murderous dictator who bombed and starved his own people?
Daad Sharab knows the answer.
For more than two decades she was Libyan strongman Col Muammar Gaddafi’s closest confidante and adviser — and was rumoured to be his lover, which she denies.
US President Ronald Reagan branded him “the mad dog of the Middle East”, but to Sharab he was a trusted mentor.
“I loved him as a friend and a fatherfigure,” says Sharab. “In all those years I heard the rumours, but I never saw him abuse anyone.”
Although now that she thinks about it, there was that time that six women were brought to Gaddafiand paraded before him so he could choose among them.
And that time a visiting dignitary’s wife broke down and sobbed, claiming the dictator had raped her.
“She was lying,” says Sharab. “Women threw themselves at Gaddafi.”
And of course, even two decades as his “friend” didn’t stop the tyrant she loved turning on Sharab, having her imprisoned — “a virtual death sentence”, she admits.
She only escaped in the confusion around a NATO bombing raid that almost killed her.
Wednesday will mark the 10th anniversary of the day an angry Libyan mob dragged the dictator from the storm drain where he was hiding and beat, stabbed and shot him to death.
But all these years later, Sharab is keen to defend him.
“Gaddafi wasn’t a monster,” she insists. “He was a revolutionary who was widely misunderstood by the West.”
Alliance
Her extraordinary alliance with the Libyan dictator is detailed in her new memoir The Colonel and I, published on Monday, revealing insights into the corruption, lies and back- stabbing within Gaddafi’s regime.
Sharab first met Gaddafi at a conference on women’s rights in Libya where, impressed by her aggressive questioning, he offered her a job as his business adviser, investing Libyan millions in international corporations.
“Women were treated like second class citizens in much of the Gulf, but Gaddafi was willing to have a woman