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Reports of the death in captivity of Hala Misrati, Qaddafi’s slavishly supportive TV presenter have been denied by Misrati herself. In a YouTube video posted on Sunday, 19 February, she said: “I am still alive.” She added: “The conditions I’m living in are good.”
Sources close to the Attorney-General, Abdulaziz Al-Hassadi, also denied the rumours on Sunday morning, saying that she was still being held and interrogated because of several charges against her.
It has been reported by news agencies as well as the press in Algeria on Saturday that the former TV presenter, was found dead in prison in Tripoli on the previous day.
Throughout Saturday, the report was neither denied or confirmed by officials.
Misrati became notorious last year with her ferocious attacks on anyone supporting the revolution. Her antics reached a climax on 20 August, just as revolutionary forces approached Tripoli, when she appeared on TV with a gun in hand saying that “with this weapon, I either kill or die today”.
“You won’t take the channel, Tripoli or all of Libya. I will protect my colleagues at the channel. We are willing to become martyrs,” she said.
She was captured shortly afterwards. A video recording was released of her bad-mouthing her captors who said she would stand trial soon.
Hala Misrati was notorious not only for her fanatical attachment to Qaddafi. On another occasion she claimed that UN Security Council No-Flight resolution on Libya was un-Islamic because Islam bans adoption, and the Security Council adopted resolutions submitted to it by other countries. Her views sparked ridicule on the internet.
After the fall of Qaddafi, she appeared in a video with three of revolutionaries said to be from the neighborhood of al-Andalus in Tripoli. In a later interview, Misrati denied that she was arrested, claiming that she had surrendered herself to the rebels when she found them to be young polite Libyans who treated her well.
In a video released in December, she appeared tired and depressed.
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