Aisha Gaddafi Interview (English Subtitles)

Gaddafi's Daughter Thrown Out of Algeria After She 'Set Fire to Presidential Residence'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The late Muammar Gaddafi’s daughter was thrown out of her Algerian safe-house because she repeatedly set it on fire in fits of anger, officials have revealed.


Aisha Gaddafi, 37, has an arrest warrant against her name after fleeing Libya when her father was deposed and then killed two years ago after 42 years in power.

The western educated lawyer arrived in Algeria with other family members after her husband — an army general — was killed in the bombing raids which destroyed Gaddafi’s regime, leaving her as a single mother.

She was accorded a presidential residence in the south of the country.

Algeria’s ambassador to Libya confirmed last month that Col Gaddafi’s widow and three of his children including Aisha, had left Algeria “a long time ago” without giving further details.

It has now emerged that Algerian authorities lost patience with Miss Gaddafi, a onetime UN Goodwill Ambassador, after she kept vandalising furniture and attacking guards out of rage over her father’s fate.

“She ended up blaming Algeria for many of her problems, and also began starting fires in the house,” said a government source in Algiers.

“Shelves in the library went up in flames, as she regularly attacked army personnel looking after her safety.” The last straw was when the bleach blonde nicknamed the “Claudia Schiffer of North Africa” destroyed a portrait of Algerian president Abdul Aziz Bouteflika, local newspaper Ennahar reported.

For this sign of disrespect she was kicked out of the country, eventually finding asylum in Britain’s Gulf ally, Oman. » | Henry Samuel and Nabila Ramdani | Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Col Gaddafi’s Children 'Flee Algeria’
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Col Muammar Gaddafi’s children have fled Algeria, fearing the oil-rich dictatorship’s improving relations with the new Libya authorities is undermining their safe haven.

Tight restrictions on the family and the prospect of a deal to allow Gaddafi’s widow back into Libya prompted the family to seek refuge elsewhere in Africa, regional officials said.

Reports in the Arabic press this week said that Aisha Gaddafi, the lawyer and most prominent member of the clan, had moved with her brother Hannibal and half-brother Mohammad to an African country.

Because of the UN flight ban on the Gaddafi inner circle, the siblings could most readily gain access to Niger, the impoverished Saharan state where a third brother, Saadi, lives on the presidential compound.

Niger is one of the few options open to the family as offers of asylum in Zimbabwe and Venezuela were impractical. Other countries are less reliable. Mauritania extradited Abdullah Senussi, Aisha’s uncle and Gaddafi’s intelligence chief back to Libya this summer.

A series of recent developments triggered the decision to leave the highly protected, secluded compound that the Gaddafis were granted inAlgerian government, a family associate said. “Definitely they wanted to get out,” he said.

Aisha Gaddafi is said to have grown increasingly frustrated with the restrictions on her communications imposed by the Algerian regime. » | Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent | Sunday, November 11, 2012