Justin Marozzi

Revealed: Essays of a tyrant’s son

Tripoli

Someone somewhere must have decided it was worth keeping. Like many parents around the world, Colonel and Mrs Gaddafi were probably terribly proud of their child’s progress at school. But you can’t take everything with you when the mob is storming the barricades. So there it was strewn on a patch of sun-parched lawn, next to a bizarre take on a Swiss chalet.

For your average Tripoline indulging in some light pilfering of the abandoned Bab al-Aziziya compound, it wouldn’t have been worth a second look. For anyone hunting down incriminating intelligence files linking the UK to torture in Libya, it wouldn’t have been up to much, either.

But the school notebook of a 12-year-old Saadi Gaddafi, one of the more loathsome members of the clan, is a fascinating snapshot into the surreal world of Gaddafi’s Libya.

Unlike his laughable football career, in which his entire Serie A record in Italy consisted of two single performances for three clubs over five years (Perugia kicked him out after he failed a drugs test in 2003), he scored well.

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