When Colonel Gaddafi hanged his first political opponent in Benghazi’s basketball stadium, thousands of schoolchildren were rounded up to watch a carefully choreographed, sadistic display of the regime’s version of justice. They had been told they would see the trial of one of the Colonel’s enemies. But instead a gallows was dramatically produced as the condemned man knelt in the middle of the basketball court, hands bound behind his back. The crowd yelled out “No, no” as they realised what was about to happen. Two young men bravely ran up to the revolutionary judges and begged them for mercy.
The worst moment came right at the end, as the hanged man kicked and writhed on the gallows. A determined-looking young woman stepped forward, grabbed him by the legs, and pulled hard on his body until the struggling stopped. “Afterwards everyone knew why she did it,” said Ibrahim Al-Shuwehdy, 47. “She was ambitious, and Gaddafi has always promoted ruthless people.”
She knew Gaddafi would be watching on TV and would see her. “Sure enough, afterwards she was rapidly promoted. That terrible thing she did was the making of Huda Ben Amir’s career.”
It was Al-Shuwehdy’s cousin, a young aeronautical engineer called Al-Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy, who was hanged that day in 1984, aged 30. He had returned from university in America three months earlier and had started to quietly campaign against Gaddafi’s brutal rule.
The woman who shocked Libya by humiliating Al-Sadek in his dying moments was at that time a lowly young Gaddafi loyalist. Today, Huda Ben Amir is one of the richest and most powerful women in Libya and one of the most hated, a favourite of the colonel, a member of his privileged elite, and twice mayor of Benghazi.
She fled from the city as soon as the uprising broke out two weeks ago, leaving her mansion home to be burned down, but she has not yet left the colonel’s side. On Wednesday she was spotted on television standing next to him at one of his speeches in Tripoli, a fat woman, squeezed into camouflage fatigues, fist pounding the air in time with his chanting supporters.
For years in Benghazi she was loathed as a party boss, but nothing she did afterwards spread fear of her like her behaviour at Al-Sadek’s execution. It earned her the nickname Huda Al-Shannaga — Huda the executioner. She boasted about it afterwards. “We don’t need talking, we need hangings,” was one of the sayings that the people of Benghazi remember her by.
Huda Ben Amir married and had two children — “What does she tell them about Al-Sadek, I wonder?” asked Al-Shuwehdy — and became a leading member of Gaddafi’s Legan Thwria, the organisation of revolutionary committees he set up to reward his followers.
To succeed, its members had no need for talent or capacity for hard work — only loyalty was required.
Before Al-Sadek’s hanging, Huda was a nobody, living in a miserable two-room shack in central Benghazi. Afterwards her family enjoyed living in a huge home in the most upmarket part of Benghazi, with a view of the Mediterranean from the top floor. She had big houses, nice cars, and a lifestyle of parties and foreign travel. Her enemies believe she creamed off millions of pounds during her two stints as mayor of the city.
She was still mayor when the uprising broke out. The people of the city hated her so much that they set fire to it on three separate occasions in the past two weeks. They also scrawled obscene graffiti about her on walls across the city.
Huda was born in the small town of Al Marg, east of Benghazi, then attended the University of Garyounis in Benghazi. When she became mayor, she was famous for always having a pistol on her side. She did not disguise her contempt for Benghazi, the city which Gaddafi hated. “There are no real men in Benghazi — Huda Ben Amir is the only real man in Benghazi,” she said during one speech.
One resident of the city said he had complained to her last year about unemployment and high prices. “What can I do – everything is decided from the top,” she told him with a shrug.
Al-Shuwehdy only ever saw her once, last year in Tripoli where he was working as a florist, decorating the airport for the September anniversary of Gaddafi’s revolution. “She was bossing people around, clearly enjoying her power. I felt fear when I saw her. I wanted to ask her why she had done that to Al-Sadek, if she ever felt sorry about it. But of course in Gaddafi’s Libya you could not ask such questions so I was silent. Inside I was burning.”
Years after the dreadful death of his cousin, Al-Shuwehdy feels it has at last served a purpose. Last month he was one of the first demonstrators in the city, together with other relatives of men executed by Gaddafi. Their protests began the uprising which overthrew Gaddafi’s rule in the east of the country.
Al-Shuwehdy is raising money to help the militias which have sprung up to defend Benghazi and, together with friends, is supplying spare parts for their vehicles. “We never forgot Al-Sadek and his example has inspired us all,” he said. “I just wish he was alive to see this day of freedom. We are committed now. We must either be free or Gaddafi will come back and kill us all.”
There is no going back for Huda either. Her enemies believe that Gaddafi may be holding her children hostage — which they claim is a common way for the regime to control its lieutenants.
Al-Shuwehdy hopes she will one day go on trial for her crimes, but believes her day of reckoning may come before that. “Her place is in Tripoli now next to the colonel. His supporters have a chance to show that they can die bravely with him. Huda Ben Amir lived her life as a loyalist to him. She may have no choice now but to die a loyalist for him too.”