Reply #95: Libya: the carpet salesman leading the hunt for Muammar Gaddafi [View All]

[tabatha]

Hisham Buhagiar hopes to reopen his carpet sales business in the next couple of weeks. He also hopes to catch Muammar Gaddafi.

Buhagiar is the closest thing the Libyans have to a chief Gaddafi hunter, though he gently points out that Libya's DIY revolution doesn't much go in for job titles. Softly spoken and quietly confident, the 47-year-old admits he is learning as he goes – but predicts Gaddafi will be captured within two weeks.

"We have to catch him, but if he resists he's going to die," Buhagiar, speaking in English, said. "We have to bring him to justice. It will show the world that after all the bad things he did, we still have the law."

The autocratic leader's last public appearance was more than three months ago when he was photographed playing chess in Tripoli with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of the World Chess Federation. His Pimpernel-like vanishing act remains the main unfinished business of the revolution. Buhagiar's operatives, however, claim to have seen Gaddafi twice this week near the southern city of Sabha.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/16/libya-hunt-for-muammar-gaddafi