Me and my minder, Scarface, in Libya

Jalal al-Treike thinks he’s my friend.  He really does.  Every day now he greets me with a “Hello Jonny,” a big grin and a hearty slap on the back.  He looks out for me and is never far away.

But Jalal al-Treike, who even the other government minders just call “Scarface” – thanks to a big scar running obliquely down his forehead – is, unfortunately, a malevolent and menacing presence and has unusual ways of showing his friendship.

One day he punched me in the face, then jabbed me in the eye with his index finger before throwing me, like a piece of driftwood, out of his way.  That was the day he tried to silence a young woman called Eman al-Obeidi, who burst into our Tripoli hotel, shouting about how she’d been kidnapped and raped by Gaddafi militiamen.

Scarface stood in the hotel dining room and drew a gun from inside his jacket, waving it at journalists. He loomed over Eman al-Obeidi and, sitting opposite her, I watched her cower in fear, as Jalal lunged first at her, then at journalists.  I saw him smash the CNN camera on the floor.

Journalists attacked by him and other government minders complained to the Foreign Press Bureau.  I actually received a fullsome apology from Musa Ibrahim al-Gaddafi, the government spokesman.

“Jonathan, this is disgraceful. This shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “These people just don’t understand. This man is not from the Foreign Press Bureau. I am sorry. I assure you he will be fired.”

But he wasn’t. For when I came back for a second stint in Tripoli, there he was, grinning at me. Jalal had acquired a new fashion accessory. He wore the sort of sleeveless khaki jacket with lots of pockets favoured by a paticular type of professional photographer.

He sported a Gaddafi green flag lapel badge and the word “PRESS” was written in English and Arabic, front and back.  Enough to give journalism a bad name, I thought.

But there was something about the manner in which Scarface greeted me on my return – in a “hey, old friend, great to have you back” sort of way – which led me to spontaneously shake his hand. It felt awkward at the time though. I felt a bit embarrassed I’d done it. A little unclean.

“Hello, Jonny!” he smirked.

“Salam aleikum.  I’m still recovering from the last time we met,” I said.

He laughed warm-heartedly as he took his seat on the government bus, in behind me.  He sat there, grinning, making the other journalists around him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t let me out of eyeshot.

“Oh my God, you’ve got Stockholm Syndrome!” said Philippa, my camerawoman.  “You’re his new best friend!”

Jalal’s English wasn’t great, but he didn’t seem to mind me just calling him Scarface.  It was a good scar. It made him look scary.  It certainly did the trick with ordinary people we encountered together.

One day in the medina – Tripoli’s old city – we watched shopkeepers stiffen in terror as I approached them, with Jalal al-Treike lurking behind me. No one would say a word in his presence.  Which, of course, is exactly why he was there.

Once, when I was in the Rixos Hotel lobby, where journalists hang around waiting for something interesting to happen,  I got talking to one of my fellow “lobby correspondents”.

“See that guy over there, the one scar on his face?” I said, “He’s the one who punched me in the face when Eman al-Obeidi came in.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Scarface.  He was really chuffed by how he’d handled all that. He was boasting about how he’d been on TV all over the world.”

I blame Scarface, in large part, for making the month that I’ve spent in his country particularly unpleasant. His is a claustrophobic, Big Brother world where everyone’s watched and only blind loyalty is expected.

Time and again he’s interfered with our filming, putting his hand over our lens, threatening me or my producer. We can argue back, remonstrate. But Libyans, I noticed, do not argue with Scarface. He instills fear. He is a product of this regime. He will have known nothing but life under Muammar Gaddafi.