Even the most hardened Gaddafi critic must have felt a little sorry this week for his daughter Aisha. After fleeing Libya for Algeria, her new hosts announced the 35-year-old had just given birth to a baby girl, barely a day after crossing the border. All very traumatic. Not least because the birth came barely four months after Aisha claimed a Nato airstrike had killed her other baby girl, four-month-old Mastoura.
Hang on. Two babies in eight months? It's possible – just about. But it also might not be the first time the Gaddafi regime has used babies as propaganda. In June, Gaddafi aides took reporters to see a seven-month-old girl who had apparently been injured by Nato strikes. Or so they thought – until a hospital staff member slipped a reporter a note, written in English: "This is a case of road traffic accident. This is the truth."
It's an old trick, too. In 1986, Libyan media reported that Gaddafi's adopted (and previously unheard of) daughter Hana had been killed in an American bombing raid. It was plausible – until, 13 years later, a 13-year-old Hana Gaddafi was photographed meeting Nelson Mandela, very much alive. Then, earlier this year, journalists found financial statements for a Hana Gaddafi – born 11 November 1985, making her six months old at the time of the 1986 airstrikes – and were told by Libyan officials that she was alive and well, and working as a state doctor. Finally, last week, reporters scouring Gaddafi's compound found medical qualifications and a British Council certificate for the same Hana Gaddafi – further proof, it seemed, for Hana's existence.
Case closed? Perhaps not: the British Council then suggested that this was a second Hana, "adopted after the other Hana's death and given the same name as a tribute". As the Guardian's Peter Walker asks, is Hana Gaddafi "a person who never existed, a dead infant, a 25-year-old doctor or a combination of the latter two?"
