My Christmas with Gaddafi's spokesman

Ros Coward

It doesn't seem highly likely that those who dispatched Gaddafi to his grisly end will be very forgiving to someone who, as the dictator's minister of information, was seen as the public face of the regime and who spread Gaddafi's inflammatory messages. But why should I care about the fate of a Gaddafi loyalist and whether he is tortured or not? Because only last Christmas, Moussa was in my home with his German wife and new baby. I cooked them a traditional roast dinner and we played with the baby. Moussa was very hands-on, changing nappies and rocking the baby to sleep. Perhaps more surprisingly, we toasted the Tunisian uprising over several glasses of good red wine, to which Moussa was always extremely partial.

– he was talking about trying to set up journalism courses and teach western journalistic concepts in Libya. From his thesis he seemed to be an idealist, believing in the power of digital technology to free individuals. He certainly saw himself as a moderniser, following the pathway Tony Blair had opened up to end Libya's pariah status. So when he suddenly appeared as Gaddafi's spokesman, it was something of a shock.

Moussa's language changed utterly. He started to talk, like Gaddafi , of "rats" and "dogs", encouraging people to resist to the death. This was someone who we felt had the chance to exercise influence, or escape and publicly humiliate the regime. Instead, he had fled with Gaddafi.

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