Everyone who claims Gaddafi tried to seduce them and how believable I think each one could be (or not)
A few notes: First of all he was incredibly handsome, flirty, and a very sensual, erotic person in the way he looked, the way he moved, the way he talked. I'm not sure if he was doing it intentionally but it's as journalist Vanya Kewley said "just the way he is." I don't even need rumors to say this about him - it's all caught on film.
Now whether he was actually sleeping with everything in sight or not - honestly I will not be surprised if he was, and I won't be surprised if he wasn't. There are strong arguments for both possibilities. There are very strong reasons for people to lie about either possibility.
So I always take these stories with a grain of salt but they're fun to read.
(I could never figure out if she is claiming this really happened or if it's intended as fanfic)
ChissΓ se il ricordo di quella notte,ti Γ¨ venuto davanti agli occhi,il giorno che hai lasciatola tua Sirte per sempre.Lβabbiamo rivissuta do
(There is a link to translate it to English on the page if you don't read Italian) It's basically a series of love poems by an Italian woman written as if she was his lover at some point in the past, (she doesn't say when exactly but the picture of her looks very old, maybe 1960s even, hard to tell) about her memories of their time together and him taking her virginity and being a playful and tender lover. Very romantic and sad.
Believable, 10% / Fanfic, 90% / Propaganda 0%
Why I think it's slightly believable? Because it does kind of sound like him (except the playing in the water part) and "Morning Light" really is a thing Libyans say in place of "Good Morning" to someone they feel a little more fondness towards, she has some pretty authentic details here, if not for those I'd say 0% chance to be true.
Why I think it's fan fic: It's just a little too perfect and romantic, no backstory whatsoever about why she's there or how they met, yeah
I don't think it's propaganda because: It wasn't widely promoted or distributed, and doesn't make him look bad unless in the sense of maybe offending religious Libyans with the sexy content, but stories for them tend to be a lot more salacious, are written in Arabic, and contain details that would bother only them like "and then we drank alcohol!" but it doesn't have anything like that in it.
Renate PoΓarnig (not her again)
Surprisingly this is the earliest plausible account I heard of anyone claiming he tried to seduce them... It takes place in 1977, so maybe up till then he was really trying not to cheat on his wife. (Coincidentally there is a theory called the seven year itch- meaning people start to get bored and look outside their marriage at the seven year point)
Renate's book was actually published in the early 80s though, which is when all the similar tales about Gaddafi being a womanizer started cropping up (and coincidentally aligns with the start of the Reagan administration, which made one of its first goals to harrass and demonize Gaddafi and make up propaganda about him π€) but the events she writes about started in 1977 at the dawn of the Jamahiriya rollout.
I've made a few posts about her already.
Anyway, what she claims to have happened was she traveled to Libya to try and score an interview with Gaddafi and gather material for the book she would later write about him; He took an interest her, which she encouraged, in hopes he would be more likely to grant her an interview. Things escalated to the point where she agreed to convert to Islam and he decided he wanted to marry her; she was afraid to displease him because *big scary dictator* and might lose the chance to interview him, so she just kept playing along and leading him on. The night she converted to Islam, he invited her over to his place. He hugged her, he was so big and strong with his broad chest and smelled like musk and flowers and she felt so safe and secure in his arms. He was muttering to her in Arabic. π«¦
They started kissing and rolling around on the carpet in his library, she was enjoying it, she said she looked into his dreamy brown eyes and almost forgot he was Gaddafi.
But then all of a sudden she saw a sad, lonely man. His appearance was tired and sickly up close (she mentions this over and over again at different times through out her book π) and besides, she didn't want to be his third wife. She saw heartaches ahead. So she stopped him by saying "I think someone's here!" It was her chaperone, Saida, who was outside eavesdropping on them. It's a little messy now because Saida had a huge crush on Gaddafi and Renate knows this.
But Saida told Renate that all she wanted was for Gaddafi to be happy and if Renate makes him happy then she would support their relationship. She also tried telling her don't worry, it's not going to be polygamy, he'll divorce Safia for you. Renate started working on her exit plan (back to Austria) Even though she loved Libya and Islam, she wasn't too keen on being stuck with Gaddafi. She simply wasn't in love with him. She liked some things about him, and found him attractive (off and on) but there were a lot of things about him that bothered her or just plain annoyed her.
Believable, 70% / Fanfic, 10% / Propaganda 20%
Why it's mostly believable: She took lots of photos of her time in Libya and the people she met while there. The book was very detailed, old-school journalism, none of this vaguery and hearsay that 21st century reporters use. There are times, dates, places, names, sights, sounds, smells. Can a good writer invent ambient details like that out of their imagination, yes of course they could, but I'm thinking the majority of what she wrote is based on her real experiences. And she really did have an interview with Gaddafi, (I've seen it on YouTube.) She was more gentle and kind than the average reporter, but still giving him the hard-hitting questions. And his attitude was more gentle and serious than usual, plus he made a big deal out of talking about how much he respects Christianity (she was originally a Christian, I'm guessing, before converting to Islam) and he always dressed up especially nicely when he was visiting Austria - as if trying to impress her.
Why it's partly fan fic: While I believe that she is telling the truth about most things, I have considered the possibility that she embellished or maybe even invented some details to make the story more exciting and juicy to sell books. I've also considered the opposite possibility. She could have left a lot out in order to protect both their reputations. Maybe she didn't actually stop him the way she says she did (You know, like that reporter who was sleeping with Fidel Castro, she could never admit that publically but everyone accused her of it and only after she died and her diary and love letters were found, did it turn out she was. Could be the same thing with Renate and Gaddafi??)
Why it could be propaganda: She is actually quite disparaging towards him (nowhere near as bad as other Western writers, but still) and criticized him mercilessly in the second half of the book after she returned to Austria; she thinks he's doing a bad job running the country, she thinks he's narcissistic, delusional, annoying and odd; she believes he was involved in terrorist attacks and the disappearance of Mussa al Sadr. She openly admits that she was deceiving him about her feelings for him, just to get the coveted interview, and she keeps flip-flopping on whether or not she sincerely believed in Islam or just converted to manipulate him.
My point being, if she was capable of being so indecisive and dishonest to him, it's kind of hard to know when she is telling the truth or not about anything else.
"Mary" (π Marie Colvin)
I'm not sure why but she seems to have many more myths and legends than anyone else here. Either he was obsessed with her or she was obsessed with him or something. And if I remember right, none of the accounts of him trying to seduce her (he tried more than once, apparently) come from her directly. It's always second-hand gossip from other journalists "Marie told me..." so here are some of the things Marie *allegedly* told her fellow journalists Gaddafi did...
The first one wasn't originally about Marie and Gaddafi, I swear to God I remember hearing it in the late 80s or early 90s and it was about someone entirely else. I can't recall who exactly, maybe Diane Sawyer and a Saudi prince. (I was only like 14 years old watching this, and mildly obsessed with Gaddafi at the time so if it would have been him I would have noticed.) Anyway the woman said she was wearing a short dress and of course no veil or anything, and the guy reached out and put his hand on her thigh, she told him to stop and he ended up chasing her around the room, and she finally said "what the hell is wrong with you?" and he said "I'm sorry, I thought all western women are sluts, especially dressed the way you are" or something like that. But then after Marie died, (like 2013-ish) somebody changed it to be about her and Gaddafi instead, and they were in his tent, not a room.
The rest of them are actually supposedly about Gaddafi and Marie:
He had left a dress and green shoes laid out on her bed for her. The shoes were way too small. He asked her later why she wasn't wearing the outfit he picked for her. "Don't you like it?," he pouted.
He invited her to interview him in a library which she described as being underground. He had her brought there to wait for him and then he made a dramatic entrance wearing a cape and announced "I am Gaddafi."
She was trying to interview him but he got bored and said "can we talk about something else?" He apparently told her he had a stressful life and asked her if she can help him forget his troubles for a day or maybe just an hour.
He felt hurt and betrayed after the 1986 bombing because she knew it was planned and didn't warn him. When he asked her why, she said "well I tried but I don't have your number" and he turned around and spread a rumor in the Libyan news that an "American woman" (he didn't call her out by name) was in love with him and tried to warn him about the bombing.
Some other time, during the AIDS crisis, Marie was staying in a guest room at Bab Aziza, and a big scary Eastern European nurse barged in and demanded to take a blood sample. Marie was like "excuse me?" Somehow she realized that the only thing this could possibly mean is Gaddafi wanted to try again to get her into bed but he wanted to make sure she didn't have HIV first. She said "NO YOU CAN'T HAVE MY BLOOD." The nurse finally gave up.
Allegedly, when Gaddafi saw her again years later he said "hey! Remember the time I tried to take your blood?" And they had a good laugh.
She said that any time through the years he was always happy to see her and had got it into his head they were friends, and would call out cheerfully "Mary!" because he couldn't pronounce her name. (I doubt it was accidental, he thinks it's funny to mispronounce Westerner's names, probably being salty because they screw up his so bad)
Sadly, Marie was one of the three Western journalists (U.S. and U.K.) to interview him in February 2011 at the beginning of the war, and she herself would be killed a year later in Syria. NATO hadn't jumped in yet but he knew they would soon. He must have felt even more back-stabbed by her role in promoting this propaganda war against him than he did when she failed to warn him about Reagan's attack.
Believable, 40% / Fanfic, 5% / Propaganda 55%
Chance these are real, in my opinion: eh... hard to say since it's never actually her telling these things directly, and since there are multiple occasions he allegedly came on to her. Some of them sound plausible, but the first one I'm almost positive is false or didn't happen with Gaddafi at least.
Fan-fic? Sort of, in the sense It's not Marie telling these directly, so maybe the people writing them just made it be about her because she was the likeliest candidate having met and interviewed him so many times.
Chance to be propaganda - pretty high. These are all written by hostile journalists from the country that was his worst enemy, U.S.A., most of them during the Reagan administration, (Reagan and William Casey used to get together and literally brainstorm on rumors they could start about Gaddafi to make him look bad or crazy btw) and the rest were written and/or recirculated during the 2011 attack on Libya which relied on propaganda to sell it even more heavily than most wars do. Another damning evidence against her credibility/impartiality is that Marie was an American regime-media war correspondent - not just an average newspaper columnist, she always went into war zones of countries America was attacking, and of course painted the leaders as "dictators." She is the gift that keeps on giving, she was killed in crossfire during the Syrian Civil War, which obviously the media in the U.S. painted as "victim of the brutal dictator Assad" and now they have the added bonus of being able to put any words they want into her mouth because she is no longer around to confirm or deny.
This shouldn't even be on here - this girl panicked and fled the country before even finding out if he actually wanted to seduce her or not.
Believable 90%/ Fanfic 0%/ Propaganda 10%
I mean did she interview him and be a total cunt to him? Yes. The video is available on YouTube. Did he lick his lips and give her the eye the whole time? Yes. Was she pretty? I guessss π€·ββοΈπ«€
No reason to be fanfic, not the part about him inviting her back to his tent anyway, because that's a common thing he does and it's not necessarily for sex, he held meetings in there.
Propaganda? The way she introduced him during the interview, and the snide tone in which she recalls the whole situation, is absolutely propaganda (or pure spite). But the simple fact that he invited her to his tent and she freaked out and fled the country in the middle of the night, probably a true story.
(Side note, Jana means "Heaven" in Arabic - I wonder if it's considered a slutty name in Libya like how "Heaven" is considered a slutty name in the U.S.A.? π³π«£)
Unnamed female journalists, per Blundy & Lycett and others
So, in addition to the ones mentioned above, you will often see articles that allude to "Gaddafi traded interviews for sex" "Gaddafi was always asking female journalists to sleep with him" etc. Usually there's no detail (let alone source) it's just a blank allegation.
Blundy & Lycett and some other guy I forgot did mention a few specific anecdotes though:
1. Gaddafi asked a female journalist to sleep with him and when she said "I don't know you well enough, I would feel like a whore if I did that" he just smiled and said "I respect you"
2. An American reporter who "described Gaddafi as 'kind of cute,' and wrestled with him in his underground boudoir..." π³ (what!!?) He told her he admired her, took off the watch he was wearing (which had a picture of his face in it) and gave it to her. When she got back to her hotel, it stopped working.
3. When Barbara Walters and her crew came to interview him and his wife, he hit on three separate female journalists who were there. (The writer didn't say if this happened in front of his wife or not.) Unfortunately the writer didn't give much other detail so I can't gage what they mean by "hit on them." Could be anything from "I like your dress" to "do you want to go have some fun in the library later?" I have no idea.
Believable 80%/ Fanfic 10%/ Propaganda 10%
Believable because ...forgive me, Muammar but I can totally picture you saying and doing all these things
Fanfic - maybe some of these people are exaggerating or they just wish
Propaganda - not so much that I think the stories are necessarily false, but that they were published by writers who didn't like him and they overwhelmingly tell only the stores about women rejecting him - like to make him seem like a loser? No way in hell he got rejected that often!?
Some Serbian (or Russian?) chick, mid 80s
I vaguely remember reading this back in 2011 or 2012 when I was surfing the net reading anything and everything I could find about Gaddafi. She was spending the night in his compound for whatever reason, in a guest room. (I'm not 100% sure her nationality, the way I remember is she was Serbian but maybe could have been Russian) She said that Gaddafi slipped into her room wearing his trademark blue jumpsuit, and started talking to her and he asked "are you a girl or a woman?" (Which was a euphemism for are you a virgin) And she said "I'm a girl" (virgin.) Well, he was willing to solve that problem for her, but she said no thanks, he laughed and said "the Serbian will is very strong."
Believable, 30% / Fanfic, 60% / Propaganda 10%
Why it might be true: I mean, that really sounds like his personality and the way he talks, it is similar to other anecdotes about him.
Why it is probably fanfic: He just happened to be wearing his blue jumpsuit? There was a video circulating at the time about him on a boat (probably patrolling the Line of Death to protect it from Reagan or something) wearing that same jumpsuit, it was total wet dream fuel. I don't blame someone for fantasizing about him in that outfit. Also why was she sleeping in his guest room at Bab Aziza, who even was she? And why did he come to her personally while having no idea if she was down for it? Why not send one of his assistants to get her and bring her to him, like he usually does in the other rumors? This whole thing sounds like someone's fantasy. The only thing working against it being fan-fic is the fact she rejected him, I mean why go to all that trouble of setting a scene and then nothing happens? π€
Why it's not especially propaganda: Like the Italian girl, what purpose would it have served? It doesn't paint him in a bad light at all, just a little horny. He was respectful and good-natured when she turned him down. The only thing that makes it kind of seem like it could be propaganda is it was picked up and circulated online around 2011 for what ever reason. Did this girl even exist, or is this fiction?
"Anna" and other random bloggers
From time to time, someone online will claim that they were Gaddafi's mistress or had a one night stand with him. Some even claim that they bore children with him. Anna's story was that she was the daughter of an American diplomat, met Gaddafi at a dinner in the late 80s, they were attracted to each other and he sent someone to fetch her later and spent the night with her. People told me it first appeared on Reddit. I'm not sure when exactly, but, like the Italian girl "Morning Light," blog, I believe it was first published after his death. Also like the Morning Light girl, she described him as being very tender and kind, of falling madly in love with her and at first telling her they couldn't be together. But in Anna's case then changing his mind and trying desperately to contact her over the years, his efforts being thwarted by her father who hid the letters from her.
Believable, 15% / Fanfic, 80% / Propaganda 5%
Why there's any chance at all it might be real: I mean, honestly I would have to see for myself, but people on this app have reached out to me (see my asks) and said that she was online for a long time and published pics of Libya and talked to people and shared details with them. She wasn't just a one-off or a story anonymously told to some reporter.
Why it seems like mostly fanfic: Her story (the one I was sent at least) is just SO much like a soap opera/romance novel.
She said she was "worldly" and mature for her age before meeting him, but had unprotected sex and OF COURSE she immediately gets pregnant. Then her dad tried to force an abortion on her without telling her, and the doctors and nurses also don't tell her what's happening or do any kind of pre-counseling π
and then she realizes what's going on, dramatically jumps out of the chair, yanks out the IVs and runs off? And her dad's like "ok, keep the baby then" with no further ado and SOMEHOW, even though she said earlier dad's on drugs, throws away Gaddafi's letters instead of extorting him for huge amount of child support that he could have used to support his drug habit? π€π€π€
Why I don't think it's propaganda: I only read one news article that cited her story at all, I'm not aware of this being widely quoted or distributed anywhere except social media sites, also, she portays Gaddafi as being kind and decent with her. I think it's just some girl trying to find a way to entertain herself (or in the slim chance it's real, to get things off her chest) I don't think there's anything nefarious behind it.
Unnamed Female Bodyguard (friend of Daad Sharab)
Aside from the way everyone's dirty mind goes wild about an attractive man having an army of women, nicknamed "Amazons" as his personal bodyguard squad, there are actually next to no reports before 2011 about any specific incident of him sleeping with any of these women. They have been interviewed lots of times and always insist that they are strictly professional and all they do is protect him from threats (like the Secret Service does for the president in the U.S.) The worst I've found (before 2011) is one documentary where the girls are acting flirty and breathless when they talk about him, and one of them comments a bit suggestively, "it gives me great pride to be a guard, and to be... good at it! ππ"
Most have expressed a profound respect for the Leader and the ideals of his Revolution. I mean, one would hope so, it seems a bit foolish to put your life in the hands of someone who wasn't 100% loyal, and it would be suicidal to rape and abuse them, thus giving them a reason to want revenge against you, even if Gaddafi WAS the horrible person his enemies say he was. (Which he wasn't. I promise.)
Daad Sharab, in her book The Colonel and I, recalled only once him having an affair with one of the bodyguards. She said he and the bodyguard were lovers for about 5 years in the 80s, the girl got pregnant by him, decided to go get an abortion, because Gaddafi wouldn't marry her (π€) she finally ended up marrying someone else and moving out of the country. She came back a few years later and tried to reconnect with Gaddafi but he wanted nothing to do with her at that point.
Believable 80% / Fanfic 10% / Propaganda 10%
Believable because: I don't think Daad is a liar, I just don't get that vibe from her. It's mainly her writing style, it's has a lot of detail but it also gets really mundane and everyday, and the things that happen aren't neat and tidy and don't always "drive the story forward" there's a lot of random unconnected events just like how real life is. Exactly like when you're chatting with a friend and they're telling you about their day. "So we were going to go get coffee but then Tim said I forgot my coat, let's go back to my apartment. So then by the time we got there, Bob said 'you know, actually why don't we go over to Shirley's because I need to return that book I borrowed from her sister. So once we got there Shirley was already making pancakes and...." yeah most of her book is like that lol.
Fanfic - probably not but I wonder if the bodyguard herself was exaggerating things to make her life sound more glamorous, or maybe Daad wanted to make her book more exciting to sell more copies. (This woman LOVES money and luxury)
Propaganda -possibly, I guess. Ok despite the fact I feel like Daad is totally truthful, I don't really know for sure. I've never met her or talked to her irl, and for some reason Gaddafi lost his trust in her toward the end and whatever it was, was so bad that she had to go jail for a little while. She herself admits she is pro-western and a capitalist and didn't really support his politics, she was a businesswoman and saw him mostly as a business partner. She has all these pics of her with Hilary Clinton like it's no big thing π‘π
TW: SA accusations, rough sex, physical abuse, hijacking, blackmail
This story got passed around, things kept being added, it kept getting more and more exaggerated, until the tabloids and bloggers were telling it as women were "always" being rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night after sex with Gaddafi. Even though this is basically the only story even remotely like this and it was most likely just an extortion plot concocted by the Swiss businessman and his wife.
The first account that I know of was told by Nuri Mismari, during an interview in which he made lots of other wild claims about all kinds of things. Now most of you already know I don't trust this guy, and that he held a grudge against Gaddafi and fled to France in 2010 after being arrested for corruption, shortly before the Arab Spring (in which Sarkozy and some other French people like Bernard Henri Levy and later, Annick Cojean, were heavily involved) kicked off. What a COINCIDENCE.
So anyway, what Nuri said happened is the wife of the Swiss businessman really wanted to meet Gaddafi, went into a room alone with him, came out all bitten and scratched up (Annick Cojean was very inspired by this tale and decided to have it happen to her victim "Soraya") and had to be rushed to the hospital. She accused him of rape and she and her husband demanded a large sum of hush money, or else they would go to the media.
Daad Sharab also remembers this incident but a bit differently. She said that the woman begged to meet Gaddafi and went into a room alone with him, (update - it was the library. π³ The. Library.) came out 30 minutes later smiling and laughing, took off the expensive earrings she was wearing and gave them to the assistant who had brought her back to meet Gaddafi (like as a thank you gift.) But once in the car she started crying and saying Gaddafi raped her and she was afraid of what her husband would think.
After this, the Swiss businessman and his wife had to go somewhere on a private jet with Daad and Nuri, and all of a sudden in midair the husband pulled a gun and tried to hijack the plane demanding $70 million. Daad describes the whole thing as being so bizarre and unexpected.
Whether I think this is believable: Well, like I said, I think this was a set-up. Planned in advance between the man and his wife as a get-rich-quick scheme. I'm not even sure actual sex happened, she and Gaddafi might have just talked for a while. But if they did have sex, it sounds like it was her idea, I mean since she was the one bribing the guard to take her to him and Daad said she came out smiling and happy. The only thing that's different between Nuri and Daad's version is the woman's mood when she came out of the room. But I think Nuri said he wasn't even there? so if not, then he didn't see her until later on the plane. And all the other stuff in between he probably just let his wild imagination fill in the blanks. I wish I could find the interview with him where he talks about it to make sure if he even claimed he witnessed it firsthand or not.
