At bay, captured Libyan spy chief defiant

TRIPOLI,  (Reuters) – Defiant and angry, captured  Libyan spy chief Bouzaid Dorda denied any wrongdoing when he was  presented to Reuters reporters yesterday by the former  insurgents who tracked him down in the capital Tripoli the  previous day.

The latest high-profile insider of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule to  be arrested, Bouzaid Dorda proved unapologetic about his role as  head of the External Security Organisation (ESO) and suggested  he was not ready to criticise the ousted autocrat just to please  Libya’s new rulers.

Bouzaid Dorda

And in heated exchanges at the private house where he was  being held, he suggested the men who arrested him in the capital  on Saturday had no right to the moral high ground.

“People have died from the two sides,” he shot back at a  former fighter who remarked that many had died in the near  seven-month-old Libyan conflict.

“You had two parties, one of them was an existing regime and  the other was the people who rebelled against it and that’s the  truth.”

As half a dozen men cradling assault rifles and wearing  battle fatigues looked on, another fighter reminded him that he  had served in several senior jobs for the ousted leader.

His voice echoing around the ground floor of the private  house where he was being held, Dorda shouted: “I did not deny  assuming any official post. Did I deny it? Did I deny it? Did I  deny it? I was carrying out my duties.”

A Reuters team visited the house in the capital’s Zenata  district where Dorda, a former prime minister and parliament  speaker, was held by members of a unit of anti-Gaddafi fighters.
His captors had wanted to present Dorda to the media to  prove their claim to have captured him.

As exchanges between him and his captors grew heated, any  hopes of an interview faded.

DO OTHER TOP
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Dorda said he was so angry about his questioning by his  captors that he was not willing to address the media directly.

Reuters had hoped to ask him to explain why he took the risk  of staying on in Tripoli three weeks after its fall. His captors  said they did not know why he had stayed in the city. They said  they had intercepted phone calls between him and members of  Gaddafi’s family who had fled to the desert.