To the very end, his mere mention made even the toughest rebel flinch

By Richard Pendlebury for the Daily Mail
Updated: 04:02 EST, 21 October 2011

The Mail's RICHARD PENDLEBURY, who spent months with the anti-Gaddafi forces, on the day the tyrant's shadow was lifted

This was the day of days, on which I had promised to call Azzud in Tripoli.  ‘If he is captured or killed, we should talk, wherever in the world we are,’ my loyal and intrepid driver had said.

‘No matter how old we have both become.’

Alas, his phone yesterday appeared to be as dead as Muammar Gaddafi, the man he loathed so much. I would have liked to have shared this moment.

Triumphant: Anti-Gaddafi fighters celebrate the fall of Sirte - the tyrant's home city - eariler today

Azzud had a true sense of the ridiculous. He once featured on a News at Ten report, bellowing ‘Come out Gaddafi and face the consequences, you bugger!’ across a desert frontline.

The invitation was delivered in the Cockney accent he’d developed in exile in Britain, after deserting the Libyan army.

But he was also a keen student of how the Libyan psyche had been warped by 42 years of Gaddafi rule.

One day, two weeks after Tripoli had fallen to the rebels, our car was stopped in the city at a checkpoint, manned by heavily armed revolutionary youths.

They were checking ID, to catch former regime loyalists.

This was a mopping-up operation. Realistically, by that stage, there was no chance of the dictator returning.

The young men were impressed that our Peugeot’s door bore a large hole caused by a  regime anti-aircraft round. But they also took themselves very seriously.

Azzud smiled. ‘And yet if someone  shouted “Gaddafi is coming!” these guys would drop their weapons and run for their lives,’ he said.

‘You have no idea how much that b*****d still lives in our fears.’

That b*****d’ no longer lives, it seems.

Jubilation: Anti-Gaddafi fighters, holding aloft flags and machine guns decorated with the colours of the NTC, cheer as news of the fall of Sirte spreads

Only now can the recovery of the Libyan people truly begin, for Muammar Gaddafi had a devastating psychological hold on this benighted nation. So tight in fact that it is difficult for us in Britain, exercised as we are by the relatively petty squabbles of democratic party politics, to begin to understand.

His was the extreme cult of the personality.

No other figure or name was allowed to flourish, so much so that during radio commentaries on soccer games in this football-mad country, the players were referred to simply by their numbers rather than their names.

Unless of course they were Saadi Gaddafi, the King of Kings’ very modestly talented son.

The waiting is over: Standing amid the battle-scarred streets of Sirte, an old man fires his assault rifle in the air in celebration of the Libyan revolution's final victory

V is for victory: Rebels stand triumphantly on top of Gaddafi loyalists' vehicles destroyed by Nato airstrikes and littered with bodies near Sirte

Since the uprising began at the start of the year, I have spent several months on the rebel side of the Libyan frontline, and when I heard the first reports of Gaddafi’s death yesterday, many disturbing scenes and images crossed my mind.

Cult of personality: Former Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, shown dressed in full military regalia

I thought of the shepherd boys from outside Brega in eastern Libya, who had been gratuitously machine-gunned in the desert by the advance guard of the first push against the rebel forces in early March.

I thought of Benghazi burning, and the thousands fleeing what would have been a bloodbath as Gaddafi’s tanks pushed in to end the rebellion once and for all.

I thought of the doctor writhing on a pavement, blood pouring from a leg wound as Gaddafi fighters urged him to praise their leader. Seconds later, he was murdered. He was the brother of someone I knew – his death filmed on a mobile phone which was later captured.

I thought of the swollen and fly-infested bodies of the dead sub-Saharan Africans outside the Abu Salim hospital in Tripoli. They had died fighting for Gaddafi’s promise of a few dollars and a passport.

I thought of the Heath Robinson anti-aircraft truck, manned by Mohammed – the oil worker trained in Warrington – and the men of his family. They were overtaken and consumed as the rebels retreated in chaos.

I also thought of the day, just before I last left Tripoli a few weeks ago, when I had a glimpse of what Libya might become now that the monster is gone. I saw a possible future when I visited the Al-Hajjaji school in the rebel neighbourhood of Souk Al-Juma.

The school’s library of copies of Gaddafi’s ‘Green Book’ of political philosophy, which once took up so much class time, had been burned. The pro-Gaddafi head had been fired. The remaining staff were vibrating with excitement.

How will they fill the gaps in the curriculum? English, French and music will return, having been banned by the old regime, said the new head.

‘We will teaching our children the meaning of democracy. Yes, it will be strange at first, but they have to learn that it’s OK to have their own ideas. Their parents need to be taught that, too.’

Free at last: Libyan youths celebrate the fall of Gaddafi and Sirte in Tripoli earlier today

Of course, thinking for yourself – both individually and as a nation – is not so easily taught.

The National Transitional  Council, Libya’s interim government, is a coalition of competing interests who have never before ruled democratically.

Many are civilian devotees of Western-style democracy. Some are former members of the Gaddafi regime. Others are Islamists, whose true vision of the future perhaps remains shrouded for the moment.

They were united by a hatred of Gaddafi. Now he is dead. The insurgency that was threatened by his fugitive status will not develop. The personality cult dies with him.

But the common bond of opposition also dies with Gaddafi. The future remains unclear.

Would it have been better if Gaddafi had been captured rather than killed?

If I had a dinar for every fighter I had met who swore he would carve his initials on the dictator’s torso then I would be able to buy one of his old palaces.

But the majority of the people with whom I have discussed the subject wanted him taken alive.

They preferred that he be brought to public account and have his crimes spelled out in court, before  the watching world; for that world to see him treated with a fairness that was denied so many innocent people during his own tyrannical rule; for Gaddafi to be shown what Libya had become without him at its head.

Who can say now what would have been best?

Beginning of a new era: Libyans wave the colours of the National Transitional Council in Tripoli as news of the death of the tyrant reaches the Libyan capital

Post-revolution, Libya is still a delicate creation; full of anger, ambition and recrimination as well as hope and good intentions.

How a trial would have affected it I just don’t know.

The political and psychological scars will heal, one hopes. Others will remain until their bearers die.

On a brilliant late summer’s day I was standing outside Tripoli’s main museum, overlooking what is now Martyrs’ Square. A custodian had just shown me the block of stone on the museum’s battlements, upon which the embattled ruler had once stood to show the world he was still alive and defiant of the Nato air campaign.

Along the street came a wiry, grey-haired old man. He saw me, recognised a probably sympathetic foreigner and crossed over. He stopped in front of me and lifted the top he was wearing. His entire upper body was criss-crossed with scar tissue. Unnamed torture – he spoke no English – had formed permanent ridges and plateaus that nature had never intended.

‘Gaddafi!’ was all he said as we faced each other.

Then he adjusted his clothing and walked away. A message delivered.

I met my driver Azzud’s eye. He had been watching the scene carefully. I wish I could have spoken to him yesterday – the day Gaddafi faced the consequences at last.