Our People in Gaddafi’s Libya (2nd edition)

Was Libya really behind the downing of the Pan Am flight? What was the story with the Czechoslovak Semtex and the American C-4 explosive that Gaddafi's Jamahiriya had at its disposal? Who first linked Semtex and Libya to the Lockerbie disaster, and who subsequently sent an emissary to Colonel Gaddafi? How did Czechoslovak arms deliveries and the deployment of our military and civilian experts to Libya take place? How did Libyan debts sink the Czechoslovak Ocean Shipping company, and how did the UN's anti-Libyan embargo almost destroy the Tatra factory in Kopřivnice? The author, who himself worked in Libya for five years, writes about these and other matters, as well as what life and work was like for our people in Libya before the Velvet Revolution. By coincidence, this was during a watershed period when our relations with the country were undergoing a dramatic change. After the November revolution, he headed the Czechoslovak embassy in Tripoli for a year and a half, a position that gave him a glimpse behind the curtain of many suppressed or distorted affairs. Using archival materials, specialist literature, and the recollections of witnesses, including former Prime Minister Štrougal, he reconstructs the true course of these events and those of later years, when the West briefly pardoned the “reformed” Gaddafi, only to immediately orchestrate the violent overthrow of the Libyan regime with the help of jihadists.