The evacuees docked in Valletta after a 35-hour trip in rough seas, a week after the rescue ship had to turn back to Malta because it came under heavy fire as it approached Tripoli’s port. On board were four Italian journalists who were kidnapped last week by Qaddafi loyalists and released a day later.
Also on board was Talitha van Zon, a Dutch model who says she had visited her ex-boyfriend, Qaddafi’s son Mutassim, less than two weeks ago at one of his homes in Tripoli where he toasted what he assumed would be victory over the rebels.
In comments to Britain’s The Telegraph published on Sunday, van Zon recounted details of her seven-year friendship with Mutassim, his lavish lifestyle that she regularly enjoyed — trips to Monaco and the Caribbean haven for the chic, St. Bart’s, luxury hotels and gifts of Louis Vuitton bags — and how he had “changed” in the months since the uprising started.
“His eyes were cold,” The Telegraph quoted her as saying. “He looked capable of killing someone, and he hadn’t looked like that before. I asked myself, not for the first time, what the hell am I doing in Libya?“
Mutassim was the country’s national security adviser and headed a military brigade. Van Zon described him the night she last saw him as seeming confident that the regime would win. “There was no fear that the regime was going to lose,” she told the newspaper. “I think he was a little bit in denial.”
She said even though a three-month relationship with Mutassim had ended years ago, they remained friends. She said she had come back to Tripoli in part to ask for help paying for treatment for her father who has Alzheimer’s, assured by Mutassim that the regime had the situation under control.
After the fighting intensified near Tripoli, van Zon said she tried to flee overland to Tunisia but was ambushed and had to turn back. When her Tripoli hotel was taken over by rebel fighters, she said, she was paraded before them and became fearful for her life. She says she threw herself from a hotel balcony and broke her arm. The Telegraph said it found her alone in a hospital ward last week.
Wearing a cast on her right arm, jeans and a gray shirt over a white tank, van Zon looked drained as she arrived in Valletta on Monday, passed a gaggle of reporters without comment and got into a waiting car.
The other evacuees, from 21 other countries including the United States, Britain and Russia, said the situation in Tripoli was safer after rebels took control but precarious with dwindling supplies of food, fuel and medicine.
“There are guns everywhere,” said one Danish businessman who asked not to be identified. “It seems like everyone in Tripoli has one.”
The Maltese government initially chartered the ship to bring back a Maltese family of four but took on other evacuees after embassies contacted Maltese authorities about getting their own nationals out.
The ship came under heavy fire when it first tried to dock in Tripoli Aug. 21 and had to turn back. It set out again, carrying food and water, and picked up the evacuees on Saturday night.
