Lost in Libya

Tripoli

‘We have some civilian martyrs for you,’ said the Libyan government minder, with the triumphant look of a Soviet housewife who has just found a bottle of Scotch in the state-controlled supermarket. He pulled aside a blanket to reveal a charred, twisted corpse, blackened arms fixed stiffly upwards, skin seared away to reveal the tendons.

It was the kind of thing that stays in the memory — but mainly because that body, and another one next to it, were the first two that any western reporter in Tripoli had seen in weeks. Even they, it turned out, were journalists for Libyan state television — proud purveyor of news headlines such as ‘Upper Volta ambassador says Gaddafi is source of all competent authority’ — who just happened to have been filming on top of the colonel’s leadership bunker at 2.50 a.m. Three more corpses were brought out last Tuesday. And that, so far, has been it.