Children of Monsters by Jay Nordlinger

Author:Jay Nordlinger [Nordlinger, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594038167
Publisher: Encounter Books

An Arab dictator’s son who has homosexual affairs, as well as other affairs, must be under exceptional pressure. (Never mind Moammar Qaddafi’s own sexual tastes, and the sadism that went with them.) When Saadi’s house was ransacked at the end of the civil war, the ransackers found gay porn, according to the Associated Press—in particular, a video called “Boyz Tracks.”

The next son, Mutassim, was a playboy himself, although he evidently stuck to one side of the fence. We know a fair amount about him from one of his girlfriends, Talitha van Zon, a Dutchwoman who was a Playboy centerfold. Mutassim lived a life embodying a typical Qaddafi combination: luxury and glamour, brutality and power. In appearance, he was what you might call goonishly handsome, like most of the Qaddafi sons. Every Christmas, he would fly himself and an entourage to Saint Barts, the ritzy and enchanting island in the Caribbean. They partied raucously, through New Year’s. To entertain himself and his guests, Mutassim would hire the biggest pop stars of the day, including ones who went by just one name, such as Beyoncé and Usher. Among the two-named stars who performed was Mariah Carey.

The Dutch pin-up, Talitha, once asked Mutassim how much money he spent, not at Christmas, but in his life in general. He did some calculating in his head—and came up with the figure of $2 million a month.

In the 1990s, when Mutassim was in his twenties, something very curious happened. Little is known about it, but the suspicion is that Mutassim participated in, or even led, a coup attempt against his father. For this shocking act of political and filial betrayal, he was exiled to Egypt—and brought home in 2006, when Qaddafi forgave him. In fact, he gave Mutassim the title of “national security adviser.” In this capacity, Mutassim met with two consecutive U.S. secretaries of state: Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

Mutassim had a sense of being in competition to be the next Qaddafi dictator. His chief competition was his older brother Saif, thought to be the frontrunner. He also had a younger brother or two to worry about. Mutassim was apparently the favorite of the “old guard” or “conservatives,” who were keen on dictatorial strength and less keen on reform. Talitha van Zon reported the following about Mutassim: “He worshipped his father. He talked a lot about Hitler, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez [the strongman who ruled Venezuela from 1999 till his death in 2013]. He liked leaders who had a lot of power. He always said, ‘I want to do better than my father.’”

Possibly the most thuggish of the Qaddafi sons was Hannibal. He left a trail of wreckage, as most of them did, really. Hannibal was the sort of fellow who hits women. Whether he is less thuggish in his present exile, few of us can say. He does not make headlines as he once did.

He was the sailor in the family, trained in the maritime arts. Eventually, he controlled Libya’s shipping and seaports for his father.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.