THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Even as their father proclaimed he was building a classless state built on socialist and Islamic principles, Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi's and his children built vast fortunes in sectors from hostels to oil.Britain has announced that the assets of the dictator and his family have been frozen, and the Treasury has created a special unit to trace the multi-billion pound assets they are thought to have squirrelled away in investments in the city. For years, though, that fortune helped the Gaddafi family win friends and influence across the world.
Saif al-Islam, the suave, western-educated second son of the Libyan dictator, was the best known of the sons.
Seen as the natural successor to his father before the wave of protests across the north African nation, the 38 year old Saif al-Islam presented himself as a reformer. He was welcomed in the West as the acceptable face of the regime, and claims the Duke of York, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair among his "good friends".
In 1995, he received his degree in architecture and engineering at Tripoli's al-Fateh University, and then went on to obtain a management degree from the International Business School in Vienna before gaining a doctorate at Britain's London School of Economics (LSE).
Presenting himself as a humanitarian ambassador through the charitable body he set up in 1997, the young Gaddafi – whose name means the sword of Islam in Arabic – was at the heart of the complex negotiations over the Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor freed by Libya in July 2007. >>> Fiona Govan | Tuesday, March 01, 2011
