By Borzou Daragahi

Don’t worry,” Abdul Latif El­yazghi assured his youngest boy. “There will be Nintendo and Wii in heaven.”

The oil engineer and two of his sons, aged 11 and 18, had been stopped at a checkpoint by Muammer Gaddafi’s men in late August, the final days of the regime’s rule in the Libyan capital Tripoli. They were tossed into a prison cell. Every few minutes came gunfire. Bodies were piled up along the side of the room. The three were sure they would be killed soon.

Who goes there? A former fighter checks a taxi driver’s documents in Tripoli this week

But a miracle happened. One of the guards ushered them to a side door. “Run!” he commanded.

It took Mr Elyazghi days to begin to tell the harrowing story to friends, including those who had taken part in the uprising against Gaddafi and were now at the head of various neighbourhood councils and militia groups.

But it was their response that shocked him most. “They told me I should say to the authorities that I was captured on March 20 instead of August 20,” he recalls with disgust. “That way I would get a nice big payment from the transitional government.”

Gaddafi and his family may be gone. But the culture of corruption and abuse they engendered remains, threatening Libya’s future economic growth and political stability. Not only do many steal; some even engage in torture, which Amnesty International describes as widespread, in the very name of the revolution that started a year ago. Transitional authorities estimate that at least $2bn has been pilfered by people falsely claiming they were wounded, fought in the uprising or paid for weapons out of their own pocket.

“If corruption was 100 per cent then, it’s now 110 per cent,” says Abdul Hamid el-Jadi, a Libyan-Swiss banker and anti-corruption crusader. “The family was arrested and killed but the opportunists are still there.” Continue reading →