Ahmed Zubair says his death sentence was never commuted during this unfathomable captivity. "Every time a door opened, I never knew if it was going to be someone taking me to my execution," he says, unbowed in pinstripe suit and tie. The work ahead is immense. "Now we are trying to build a new country under the rule of law. We are united. Tripoli is our capital, Benghazi is our city. It will be difficult after 42 years of Gaddafi. It will take a long time. But the Libyan spirit is there. The people understand. They can wait." A friend suggests that with his uniquely painful backstory, Haj Ahmed would be the perfect successor to Gaddafi. A Mandela moment in the offing?

 

Benghazis still smart from the violence meted out by Gaddafi's forces on March 19, the final catalyst for Nato's more muscular intervention. Adel Ibrahim, a Benghazi hotelier who owns the Al Fadhil Palace, has a ringside seat at the revolution.

"You know what Gaddafi told the soldiers before they attacked? ‘Kill every man under 50 and the women are yours. Do whatever you want with them'." He describes a confrontation he witnessed on the streets. "Three men walked up to a machine-gunner with their arms outstretched. The first man said, ‘Shoot me'. The soldier shot him dead. Then the second went up and said the same thing. The soldier shot him in the knees, then the chest. Dead. Then the third man came up, arms open wide. The soldier dropped his gun, turned round and fled."

At this stage, the al-Qaeda threat appears negligible. Gaddafi poses a far greater menace, both to his people and to the West, whose credibility diminishes with every day he is allowed to remain in power. Noman Benotman, a former senior member of the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, says al-Qaeda has no "real presence" and "few, if any, active operatives" in Libya.  Dr George Joffé, Middle East and North Africa expert at Cambridge University, argues that fears of a significant al-Qaeda presence in Libya are "totally" overblown. "I think al-Qaeda has been completely marginalised by the recent upheavals in the region," says the terrorism expert Peter Bergen, a programme director at the New America Foundation. "No one's burning American or Israeli flags or carrying placards of Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda is losing the battle of ideas in the Muslim world."

 

When Gaddafi is gone, it is only a matter of time before the enormity of the crimes his regime committed over four decades is revealed. History's verdict will not set much store by former Labour Party MP Tam Dalyell's 1993 prediction: "I believe that in the 21st century, Colonel Gaddafi's government will come to be seen as one of the most effective ‘ecologically imaginative governments' of the 20th century." Nor will it agree with Gaddafi's delusional braggadocio of 1987: "History should show that if there was any mould, I have contributed towards its destruction. If there has been any shackle binding the Libyan people, I have participated in its demolition until the Libyan people have become free." 

Instead, future historians, less distracted by his eccentricity and sartorial pomp, less seduced by Libya's black gold, will elevate Gaddafi to the top tier of 20th-century tyrants. His regime vies with Saddam Hussein's for murderous supremacy.