Though Muammar Gaddafi was said to be unusually frugal by the standards of Arab despots, CNN reports that his family lived a decadent and savage lifestyle that sounds like something out of Salo.
As we were about to leave, one of the staff told us there was a nanny who worked for Hannibal Gadhafi who might speak to us. He said she'd been burnt by Hannibal's wife, Aline. I thought he meant perhaps a cigarette stubbed out on her arm. Nothing prepared me for the moment I walked into the room to see Shweyga Mullah.
At first I thought she was wearing a hat and something over her face. Then the awful realization dawned that her entire scalp and face were covered in red wounds and scabs, a mosaic of injuries that rendered her face into a grotesque patchwork.
It's not the psychopaths' first rodeo, of course! Mr. and Mrs. Hannibal Gaddafi were famously arrested in Swizterland for assaulting servants in 2008. His guards were also detained, for attacking the arresting officers. Swiss president Hans-Rudolf Merz publicly apologized for the arrest.
Luxury, horror lurk in Gadhafi family compound [CNN]
