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“I never thought I would see the country again, never. It was a dream. It was a dream that has come true for me.” Mansour el Kikhia

Prominent Libyan opposition figure Mansour el Kikhia has been living in exile in the United States for more than three decades.

As he campaigned against the dictatorial rule of Moamar Gaddafi from afar, he was forced to watch, helpless, as his relatives and friends were arrested, tortured and killed, his family home was seized and turned into a museum and Libya became a giant prison for anyone even suspected of disloyalty.

Now he is at last free to come home.

Foreign Correspondent’s Mary Ann Jolley first met el Kikhia back in February, for her story on Gaddafi’s relations with the West, Monster Makeover. Back then, the uprising had just begun, and he was fearful for the future of his nephew, Salim, who had disappeared while helping to transport wounded fighters to hospital.

For this latest story, Jolley accompanies Mansour el Kikhia back to his homeland, where he is reunited with friends and family, including an emotional meeting with his rescued nephew. Salim describes how he was imprisoned and tortured for seven long months in a notorious Tripoli prison. It’s a story, like so many others, that can only now be told.

In Gaddafi’s Libya, all roads led to the Abu Salim prison, in Tripoli. This was where tens of thousands of political prisoners were incarcerated. Many never left and their families are only now discovering the truth of what happened to their loved ones.

In the prison, Jolley and el Kikhia discover dozens of bewildered Libyans wandering through the cells and corridors, looking for answers. Elsewhere in the capital, they catch up with those trying to build a civil society from scratch, in a country that’s damaged and confused.

El Kikhia warns that after decades of repressive, one-man rule, the way ahead will not be simple.

“Because Libya had very weak institutions, Mr Gaddafi was able to take over very quickly. We have to work very hard to prevent this being hijacked by fundamentalists or by radicals or whatever it takes.” Mansour el Kikhia

Obelisk/Mansour walks

Music

00:00

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:    “You know if you want your freedom you have to spill your blood for it.  If somebody gives it to you, it’s not freedom.

00:08

Shootings on street

00:14

Mansour

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  [upset]  Excuse me.  We will not give up, we will not give up.  It’s either freedom or death”.

00:25

Still. Gaddafi.

Music

00:35

Mansour walks in Washington

JOLLEY:  We first met Mansour el Kikhia in Washington in March this year. 

00:41

Archival. Libyan uprising

The uprising in Libya was only three weeks old and the international community was yet to act.

00:46

Mansour

He’d received a call from his sister in law to say Colonel Gaddafi’s forces had caught his nephew.

00:52

Still. Mansour’s nephew

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “He went to Brega

01:01

Mansour/ Still. Mansour’s nephew

to help bring back the wounded, back from [upset] excuse me, to bring the wounded from the battlefield.  And she said my son is not better than the sons of some of the other mothers and it’s worth it”.

01:04

Mansour Skype conversation

JOLLEY:  It was a distressing time for the Libyan exile so far from home and unable to help his family.  He couldn’t return.  Gaddafi had him as a marked man.

01:32

Mansour. Super:
Mansour El Kikhia

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “He had tried on more than one occasion to kidnap me so it’s not, it’s not an issue of going back”.

01:44

Mansour teaching

JOLLEY:  So the academic, who’s lived in the United States for 33 years, got on with his work lecturing his students at San Antonio University in Texas. 

01:58

Excerpt. Mansour on Jon Stewart Show

And as the Libyan revolution developed, Mansour el Kikhia’s knowledge and opinions were more and more in demand.

02:12

JON STEWART:  [US TV show]  “Thank you so much for joining us”.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “Thank you for having me”.

JON STEWART:  “You came a long way. Where --you are from Libya”.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “Yes I am from Benghazi actually”.

02:19

Mansour

“I never gave up.  I never, never, never gave up.

02:27

Excerpt. Mansour on Jon Stewart Show

I never gave up on fighting the regime”.

JOHN STEWART:  [US TV show]  “If you speak out against me, if you in any way raise your finger against me, you will die”.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “You will die”.

JON STEWART:  “Wow”.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “You will die”.

02:32

Mansour

“If you want to change things, you can’t change with your hand, then change it with your mouth

02:40

Excerpt. Mansour on Jon Stewart Show

and I use it to the best of my ability to fight this regime”.

Nothing is easy, Jon”.

JON STEWART:  “Right”.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “This is nation building”.

02:46

Mansour packing suitcase

JOLLEY:  Now with the Gaddafi regime ousted, Mansour el Kikhia is heading home.

02:55

Mansour in car

He’s keen to see how his countrymen are faring and to spend time with the family and friends he’s missed for decades.

03:01

Mansour hugs friend at airport

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “I never thought I would see the country again, never. 

03:10

Mansour in plane

It was a dream.  It was a dream that has come true for me”.

03:20

Egypt – Pyramids and Sphinx/ Cairo

Music

03:27

JOLLEY:  A long international flight ends in Cairo, Egypt.

03:33

Music

03:38

Mansour leaves hotel in minivan

JOLLEY:  From here his journey to Libya takes to the road.  Benghazi is still two days away and as the minivan heads through the streets of Cairo, past the pyramids and out into the Sahara Desert, there’s time to catch up with a fellow traveller.

03:42

Mansour and Najib in minivan

A cousin, Najib el Kikhia, is also heading home.   He grew up in Tripoli

04:03

Photo. Najib and Mansour as young men

and, like Mansour, has a fractured relationship with the country, leaving 35 years ago and unable to return until after the revolution.

04:09

View from minivan/Inside minivan

Music

04:19

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “I’ve known Najib all his life.  I’ve known him since he was a year old. I used to carry him up on my shoulders”.

04:23

JOLLEY:  Their decades spent in the US together have only strengthened their bond.

04:30

Najib

NAJIB EL KIKHIA:  “I protested.  I went to meetings and did a lot against Gaddafi”.

04:34

Ocean at Cyrenaica

Music

04:43

Cyrenaica

JOLLEY:  Eventually Najib and Mansour roll into Libya’s eastern province, Cyrenaica – the heartland of the opposition.

04:49

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “Benghazi was the spark that started it,

04:57

Mansour in minivan

but the opposition is throughout this whole region”.

04:59

Roadside

Music

05:02

JOLLEY:  The people from this region and particularly its capital, Benghazi, had long been a thorn in Colonel Gaddafi’s side. 

05:05

Benghazi conflict.
Super: February 2011

They resisted his rule and he retaliated by imprisoning thousands of them.  But on the 17th of February the fight back began.  Benghazi became a battleground for the future of Libya, locals drawing inspiration from popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and deciding enough was enough.

05:14

Mansour in minivan

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “And so once the revolution started, there was a tremendous fight back against the regime’s identity and those who identified with the regime and you can see it in the burnt buildings, burnt houses and so forth”.

05:47

Benghazi sunset

06:02

Minivan arrives in Benghazi

JOLLEY:  Light fades as Mansour and Najib arrive in Benghazi.

06:06

Family greet Mansour and Najib

Family are out on the street waiting to welcome them home. 

06:13

It’s an emotional gathering, but ahead are some confronting encounters as the past collides with the present.

06:21

House exterior.

06:36

Mansour and Najib in family house in Benghazi

Mansour El Kikhia may have spent much of his life away from his homeland but the attachments endure and here, not far from where his family now lives, memories come flooding back.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “I always remember the serenity in this house and I felt very bad when we left it”.

06:57

JOLLEY: This is where he spent his childhood.  In 1978 the Gaddafi regime seized it from the family for public use. It’s now a museum. 

07:06

The el Kikhias are a political dynasty and their house has rich historic value.  Mansour’s father

07:27

Photo. Mansour’s father

was a Pasha, a high-ranking political figure during the Ottoman era and when Libya gained independence

07:36

Painting. Mansour’s father

in 1951 he became the first Prime Minister of Cyrenaica.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “I never really knew him very well. I mean he had me he was 70 years old. 

07:43

Mansour

I’ve known him more-- less as a father and more as a figure of history”.

07:53

Archival. Jets fly over

08:01

Photos. Mansour’s cousin/Benghazi.

JOLLEY:  Mansour’s cousin, also named Mansour el Kikhia is perhaps the best known of the political clan. He was Libya’s Foreign Minister in the early ‘70s but he resigned when the regime began to imprison and kill political dissidents.

08:10

Music

08:26

JOLLEY:  Eventually, like his namesake, he was forced to leave the country and he too became one of Libya’s most prominent human rights activists.  But in 1993 when he was in Egypt attending an international conference, he was abducted and never seen again.

08:35

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “So we know the Egyptian Government was responsible for abducting him from his hotel

08:55

Mansour

and they handed him over to Libyan security services as a gift”.

08:59

Najib. Super:
Najib El Kikhia

NAJIB EL KIKHIA:  “He was like my father and we were so close.

09:04

Photo. Cousin Mansour

I felt so sad when he passed away”.

09:21

Benghazi

Music

09:26

JOLLEY:  The politician turned dissident never lived to see a defining battle erupt in the heart of his city. 

09:31

Burnt out buildings and cars

Music

09:38

JOLLEY:   “This was Gaddafi’s compound in Benghazi. It was here that the battle for liberation began. 

09:47

Jolley to camera

Thousands of locals  with no guns in their possession climbed the fortified fences and took on the heavily armed guards”.

09:52

Uprising at compound

Music

10:00

JOLLEY:  With cars, heavy machinery and homemade bombs they finally brought down the wall. 375 died, most of them in their 20s.

10:07

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “I was very proud of them because, you know, in all honesty,

Mansour. Super:
Mansour El Kikhia

they fought against bullets with bare chests. That’s what they did, bare chests. They had no guns. 

Gaddafi address

This was an instant revolution against the pain that has been in their side for 40 years”.

10:31

Uprising at Tripoli

JOLLEY:  The fire had started and eventually the uprising fanned out across the country towards the capital Tripoli, the centre of Gaddafi’s power base. 

10:41

Salim

SALIM BENKATO: “Many people were dying on the battlefield… dismembered and impossible to put together”.

10:56

Salim with scouts

11:07

JOLLEY:  Salim Benkato is a scout leader and knows all about Gaddafi’s authority in Tripoli – he’s got the scars and bruises to prove it.

11:14

SALIM BENKATO:  “They stopped us, stripped our clothes from us, shackled, hit and brutalised us”.

11:29

Photos.  Salim

JOLLEY:  Salim is Mansour el Kikhia’s nephew, the young man who was helping bring wounded from the frontlines when he went missing, feared dead, in the opening weeks of the revolution.  Instead, he was captured, tortured, taken to the capital and imprisoned.

11:38

Razor wire

SALIM BENKATO:  “We were savagely beaten on the soles of our feet.

12:00

Salim

We were told to walk, but for four days I could not even stand. 

12:06

 Prison cells

Music

12:10

Salim

SALIM BENKATO: We were sprayed with urine.  There was no water. 

12:15

Prison cells

Music

12:19

SALIM BENKATO: They blindfolded us and made us go down a narrow corridor with soldiers lined up against the walls. 

12:22

Salim

They started to beat us with everything in their possession – pipes and weapons.  I did not think I was going to survive”.

JOLLEY:  Salim was detained for almost 7 months,

12:28

Prison

ending up in Tripoli’s most notorious prison, Abu Salim.

12:48

Salim returns home

When the revolution took hold in the capital, he and the other inmates were freed.  He arrived home to his family in Benghazi in August to a hero’s welcome.

12:56

FAWZI BENKATO: “It seems that his luck, his will,

13:13

Fawzi. Super:
Fawzi Benkato
Father

our prayers… I don’t know… he came back. When he came back we were very happy!”  (laughing)

13:19

Mansour and Fawzi embrace/ Mansour and Salim embrace

13:29

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “True, he is linked to me by blood and true that I care about him perhaps more than I care about others, but the whole honest truth is that

13:38

Mansour

to me he’s no different from many of the others who’ve died”.

13:49

Artworks at Museum of Gaddafi Crimes

Music

14:02

JOLLEY:  The horrors of Abu Salim prison are shared by so many throughout the country. 

14:07

Music

14:13

Ali Al in museum

ALI AL WAK WAK:  “We were in the compulsory army and we refused to obey orders.  They sentenced us to death then changed the sentence to seven years imprisonment”. 

14:29

Artworks at Museum of Gaddafi Crimes

Music

14:37

JOLLEY:  Artist, Ali Al Wak Wak was in Abu Salim prison in the 1980s and now occupies a very different but still very chilling space – the Museum of Gaddafi Crimes.

14:41

Ali Al in museum

ALI AL WAK WAK:  “Naturally people are now all free and each one of them expresses his feelings in his own way – some by poetry, some in the media, some with music. I wish I could express how I’m feeling now. There is nothing more beautiful than this feeling.  It’s a feeling of pride”.

14:53

Men chant

JOLLEY:  Signs of exuberance and liberation are everywhere in Benghazi, such a dramatic change of mood in such a short time. 

15:23

Street graffiti  caricatures

“When we were last in Libya for Foreign Correspondent in 2004, nobody could say anything about Gaddafi.

15:35

Jolley to camera on street

If they did, they’d be likely to be killed or imprisoned. But now the walls of the cities are covered in caricatures

15:40

Street graffiti  caricatures

Music

15:48

Mansour with magazine journalists

JOLLEY:  And the freedom of expression extends to the news media and the people covering the dramatic changes in Libya.

16:02

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA: “Ultimately, believe me, you will be a beacon in the new Libya”.

16:12

JOLLEY:  The Libyan Times is a new magazine funded by a Benghazi businessman.  It’s published in English and it’s challenging the status quo with women taking up prominent roles on staff.

16:16

Soundas Al Shamani contributed a harrowing story to the first edition. 

16:36

Photo. Soundas’s father with baby

Music

16:41

Newspaper article

JOLLEY:  A story about her father, it was too dangerous for her to hear during the Gaddafi years. 

16:45

Soundas and mother

Soundas’s mother, Murada Al Shamani, couldn’t tell her even in the privacy of her own home.

MURADA AL SHAMANI:  “I was afraid to tell her the story in fear of what might happen,

16:54

if during conversation with friends she inadvertently says that her father was a good man and puts the blame on Gaddafi for what happened to him”. 

SOUNDAS AL SHAMANI:  “I only knew he was in prison

17:08

Soundas

and they’re always telling me, like, for political reasons or something like that”.

17:23

Photos on wall at Freedom Square/ Soundas and mother at wall

JOLLEY:  Abdulaziz Al Shamani’s photo now hangs along with hundreds of other Bengahzians on the wall of martyrs here in Freedom Square.  Even now Soundas and her mother can’t be precisely sure why he was imprisoned, but they’re certain his religious devotion had a lot to do with it. 

17:28

“Was he actually sentenced or charged for anything?”

SOUNDAS AL SHAMANI:  “Not at all”.

17:52

MURADA AL SHAMANI:  “Nobody discussed what the problem, what’s the problem.  Just keep him inside”.

SOUNDAS AL SHAMANI:  “Nobody knew why, you know?”

17:56

JOLLEY:  Gaddafi targeted many devout Muslims on the pretext they were a security threat.

SOUNDAS AL SHAMANI:  “Gaddafi like always think they are al Qaeda,

18:03

Soundas

they are terrorist people, they’re like doing bad things and stuff but they weren’t”.

18:11

Mansour in car

Music

18:18

JOLLEY:  In so many ways Abu Salim prison in Tripoli was the epicentre of Gaddafi’s reign of terror.  Mansour el Kikhia decides he needs to see it for himself.

18:24

Abu Salim prison. Mansour visits

Located on the outskirts of the capital, in what was the Gaddafi stronghold, the prison was liberated in August when the city fell to the transitional government. Tens of thousands were locked up here for their political stance and many simply for their religious beliefs.

18:34

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “They were never tried nor sentenced. They were just kept in limbo and that’s what the regime does.  Keeps you in limbo”.

19:03

Women inside prison

JOLLEY:  Many former inmates and their families are now wandering the corridors trying to make sense of it all.

19:10

Mansour with two former inmates

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA: “He has spent in this prison 14 years and he has been in this prison for 12 years. His crime was that he did not inform on his neighbour”.

JOLLEY: Over the decades, resentment

19:19

Prison cells

and anger at the gross injustices grew, but it was one particular event within these walls fifteen years ago that would sow the seeds for the eventual overthrow of the dictatorship.

19:31

Two men inside prison

MAN:  “My brother’s son, one is killed here.  Killed here”.

JOLLEY:  “When was he killed?”

MAN:  “1996”.

JOLLEY:  “In the massacre?”

MAN:  “Yes”.

19:45

Glass in courtyard

19:56

Jolley to camera in courtyard

JOLLEY: “In this courtyard in 1996, 1200 people were slaughtered because they protested about the conditions. That massacre was a catalyst to the current uprising”.

19:58

The vast majority of those killed were from Benghazi and one of them was Soundas Al Shamani’s father.

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “The regime did not tell

20:11

Mansour

the families of those whom it killed until about 10 years later”.

20:21

Still. Gaddafi

Music

20:26

Feb 2011 protest in Benghazi

JOLLEY:  In February this year, families of victims of the 1996 massacre took to the streets of Benghazi to protest the arrest of a lawyer who was seeking justice for them.  Hundreds of others joined as they moved along.

20:35

Mansour

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “They weren’t asking for much, just please open up the system.  Enough is enough. 

20:56

Feb 2011 protest in Benghazi

The response they got was bullets and killed many, many people”.

JOLLEY:  The regime’s violent response to the protestors would bring on its undoing.

21:01

Gaddafi’s compound

Benghazians stormed Gaddafi’s compound and the dominoes started to fall. 

21:11

Benghazi uprising. Gaddafi capture

After 42 years of repression and a bloody 8 month rebellion, Libyans have finally got rid of the dictator.  Colonel Gaddafi is no more.

21:21

Benghazi roads

But now the real work begins – building a new unified nation and it’s daunting.

21:41

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “My major concern is laying solid foundations for institutions.

21:49

Mansour

Because Libya had very weak institutions, Mr Gaddafi was able to take it over very quickly”.

21:53

Men with guns on streets of Benghazi

Music

21:59

JOLLEY:  Power struggles between rivalling Eastern and Western regions are beginning to emerge and Islamic hardliners, many of whom played defining roles in the rebellion are causing dangerous tensions within the new civilian government.

22:05

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “Libyans do not want a theocracy.  They want democracy.

22:23

Mansour

We’re not Saudi Arabia, we’re not Iran, we’re not Afghanistan. We never were”.

22:26

Armed rebel fighters

Music

22:32

JOLLEY:  In Tripoli hundreds of armed rebel fighters from outside the capital who helped to liberate it are yet to return home and some of them are mounting revenge attacks on those associated with the old regime.

Music

22:38

Mansour

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “It’s not a deliberate policy of the Council to torture or to seek revenge. The policy of the Council is pursuing is the policy of national reconciliation.  Now the Council is not able to reign in some of those individuals who are committing these atrocities I understand you know?  But what can the Council do?  It doesn’t have an army of its own”.

22:58

Najib and family looks at photos

JOLLEY: Despite the difficulties ahead, for Mansour, Najib and their families, nothing can douse their hope for a brighter future.  Right now they’re relishing the freedom of being able to sit and talk face to face after so many years. 

23:21

NAJIB EL KIKHIA:  “That was neat, you know. There are a lot of family members that I never met

23:45

Najib

and when I came back they all have kids and it was pretty nice”. 

JOLLEY:  “So do you feel as though you’ve missed a lot?”

NAJIB EL KIKHIA:  “Well you know, personally yes but when you think about your nation, your family,

23:50

Family gathered

you know, it’s part of sacrifice. You know, you feel like

24:14

Najib

a dream come true and sometimes, you know you don’t get to see the end of the dream.  So it’s just, it’s pretty neat”.

24:20

Mansour

MANSOUR EL KIKHIA:  “I see tremendous amount of problems, but on the other hand, you know, I think they’re not insurmountable.

24:29

Salim with boys at beach with sail boat

I’m optimistic.  I can’t afford to be but optimistic. 

24:37

Music

24:41

MANSOUR:  It’s only now that Libyans are beginning to feel comfortable with the freedom that they’ve gotten and they have done the impossible by removing this ogre.  And they have given us back hope, they have given us back our lives”.

24:52

Music

25:06

JOLLEY:  Just a couple of months ago Salim Benkato was languishing in Abu Salim prison wondering if he’d survive. Now he’s out in the sunshine full of hope for a Libya freed from the grip of Moamar Gaddafi.

25:17

SALIM BENKATO:  “I want a better future, God willing, for me, for my parents, for my friends and for all people.  A future full of freedom, with no-one imposing himself on others”.

25:33

Music

25:42

Credits:  

Reporter/Producer: Mary Ann Jolley

Camera: David Martin

Editor: Garth Thomas

25:55

Burnt out buildings and cars

Music

26:30

JOLLEY:   “This was Gaddafi’s compound in Benghazi. It was here that the battle for liberation began. 

26:36

Thousands of locals  with no guns in their possession climbed the fortified fences and took on the heavily armed guards”.

26:42

Men chant

JOLLEY:  …liberation are everywhere in Benghazi, such a dramatic change of mood in such a short time. 

27:00

Street graffiti  caricatures

“When we were last in Libya for Foreign Correspondent in 2004, nobody could say anything about Gaddafi.

27:10

If they did, they’d be likely to be killed or imprisoned. But now the walls of the cities are covered in caricatures

24:16

Two men inside prison

JOLLEY:  “In the massacre?”

MAN:  “Yes”.

27:30

Glass in courtyard

27:33

Prison courtyard

JOLLEY: “In this courtyard in 1996, 1200 people were slaughtered because they protested about the conditions. That massacre was a catalyst to the current uprising”.

27:36

27:48