Libya: Dutch Playboy model gives insight into Gaddafis

Dutch model Talitha van Zon, who has become caught up in the unrest in the Libyan capital Tripoli, has given an insight into the Gaddafis in an interview to British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. She says she was shocked when she saw Mutassim Gaddafi last week.

The model was in Tripoli at the invitation of Gaddafi's son when rebels more or less took over control of the capital this week

Fearing for her life, she broke her arm when she jumped from a balcony trying to flee the rebels. In the newspaper she described her former boyfriend as a changed man: "He had a beard, he was sitting on a couch strewn with automatic weapons, and he was guarded by unsmiling 16-year-old boys with sub-machine guns."

The newspaper describes how journalist Nick Meo found the former Playboy centre-fold alone and frightened in a hospital in Tripoli. She has now been evacuated by a humanitarian ship possibly to Malta. The evacuation was organized by the Hungarian embassy - the only embassy still open in Tripoli..

In the interview, she gives a unique insight into the last weeks of the Gaddafi regime and describes her decision to visit Tripoli as a big mistake. She says met Mutassim only once for a drink a day before the rebels reached Tripoli. “He was not afraid that the regime would fall to the rebels.” He also praised his late brother, Saif al-Arab Gadaffi, who was killed in a NATO bombing in April, calling him a martyr. "He worshipped his father. He talked a lot about Hitler, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez. He liked leaders who had a lot of power. He always said 'I want to do better than my father'."

Ms van Zon met Mutassim Gaddafi in an Italian night club in 2004. During a three-month relationship he showered her with expensive trips and gifts. She ended the relationship after she realized he was seeing other women, but the two remained friends.

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