Does Muammar Gaddafi, the venerable Guide of the Libyan Revolution, have Corsican ancestry ? According to a tenacious rumor on the Isle of Beauty, he is the son of a Corsican fighter pilot, a Free French hero on a mission in Libya during World War II. Although there’s no irrefutable proof, there is a not-insignificant trail of evidence, which Air Force officers have been looking into in recent years. « Bakchich » investigated.
Did you know you’re in Gaddafi’s father’s hometown ?” The rare mainlanders stopping off in Vezzani, a charming little village on a mountainside in Upper Corsica, are informed right away. Quite proudly, the townspeople offer up the information unprompted : if village lore is to be believed, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan head of state, is the son of a Corsican air force pilot by the name of Albert Preziosi.
Ah, Albert ! His shadow still falls over Vezzani. As soon as you enter the village, a marble plaque on the Post Office building honors the memory of the Captain, who was born in 1915 and died in 1943, in the sky over Russia, in the cockpit of a fighter plane in the Normandy-Niemen squadron. A few turns in the road later, and you come across the village monument to its war dead, which commemorates this officer, “who died a hero’s death during an airborne battle North-East of Karachev,” and whose body was never found. Even in Town Hall, a framed photo of young Albert in uniform takes up more room on the wall than the official portrait of omni-president Sarkozy…
Like the citizens of his town, Jean-Pierre Pagni, the Mayor of Vezzani, isn’t the least bit surprised when you ask him about the “legend” of Gaddafi’s Corsican ancestry. Au contraire. He’s “always heard tell of it”. But, like the rest of them, he has never had in his possession any “documents that would prove it… or disprove it either.” Gesturing towards the airman’s portrait (see here some pictures), he can’t help pointing out that, “The resemblance between Albert Preziosi and the young Muammar Gaddafi is uncanny though, don’t you think ? That doesn’t prove anything, of course, but it’s a nice story.” If the “legend” were ever proven, it would be fine with him, “The town is prepared to provide Mr. Gaddafi with land where he could install a tent, or build a house !” !
Like the locals in Vezzani, influential islanders are fascinated with the “legend” too. And they all want a piece of the action. In the opinion of Alexandre Alessandrini, Member of the General Council for the Canton of Vezzani and of the Corsican Assembly, certain political events could confirm good old Gaddafi’s Corsican ancestry : specifically Libyan support for Corsican nationalists, at the start of their violent period in the 70s. Looking you right in the eye, he states that, “Some nationalists were invited to Libyan weapons and explosives training camp.” Proof positive, as far as the Council member is concerned, that the Colonel had a soft spot for his revolutionary cousins.
But times have changed. Gaddafi is now persona non grata on the Continent. Which makes it all the more a shame that the “local boy” didn’t “take advantage of his official visit to France to spend some time in Corsica : he would have received a warm welcome.” Warmer than on the mainland in any case… The same sentiment is expressed by François Quilichini, a dashing retiree from the Security Branch of the French Police Force in Ajaccio (the capital of Corsica) and one-time “colonial officer,” from 1967 to 1977. At the time he was the security-intelligence bureau chief for the president of Niger.
He remembers in great detail the young Libyan head of state’s first official visit to his Nigerian counterpart, Hamani Diori. “In January 1974, President Diori met with Colonel Gaddafi in Zinder (a Saharan city in Niger that is close to the Libyan border). I attended the meeting. In the evening, President Diori informed me that I had shaken a compatriot’s hand ! That’s how I learned that Gaddafi’s father was Corsican.” At the time, “I didn’t look into it, and now I regret it. But you have to admit that the hypothesis makes sense, considering Albert Preziosi’s presence in Libya in the 40s. And in the colonial army, Corsicans were the ones who got involved with the natives the most…”
Seen from Vezzani, the legend of Gaddafi’s Corsican ancestry is so tenacious that it has made it into the “Isle of Beauty’s” collective imagination. Yet despite all the whispering, there is no paper trail. Not yet, anyway. No biography of Albert Preziosi mentions the birth of a Libyan love child. Nor do any contradict it either. For that matter, there isn’t much documentation to be had about the pilot’s life.
If you get in touch with the Air Force’s history department, located in Vincennes (near Paris), which centralizes documents and is a reference for biographers and war historians, the fact is that the “Preziosi” file is pretty slim : a few biographical elements from the specialized press, plus his Air Force records. They don’t even have the article published in 1977 by the far-right weekly Minute, whose headline read “Could Gaddafi be the son of a Corsican captain ?”, despite the article’s impact on the island.
Although Albert Preziosi’s file, consulted in the Air Force archives, is slim, Bakchich did manage to dig up one gem : a hitherto unpublished exchange of letters between upper-echeleon French officers referring, in no uncertain terms, to Gaddafi’s Corsican ancestry. Proof positive that Bakchich isn’t the only one following this trail, because, as the document, dated March 15, 1999, attests, high-ranking officers in the French Air Force are taking it seriously.
This letter was written by the head of the department, General Silvestre de Sacy, on Air Force Historical Service letterhead, in response to a Colonel’s query about the veracity of the Preziosi/Gaddafi connection. In a pompous style, the General admits from the get-go, “I have myself heard [this issue] mentioned frequently” but “I have never consulted the archives to see if there could be a grain of truth to the rumors concerning Captain Preziosi.
Your letter was an excuse for me to delve into this business more closely.” All the more so in that the Colonel had clearly done the groundwork himself. “If we accept that Gaddafi was born in early 1943, as you have written,” the General goes on, “he would have been conceived in the second quarter of 1942. That period does indeed correspond to one in which the “Alsace” squadron, to which Captain Preziosi belonged before he joined “ Normandy”, was stationed in Fuka, in the northern part of the Libyan desert (…) The squadron left Fuka in late June.” So the time and place, confirmed by Air Force archives, would seem to support the Colonel’s theory, wouldn’t they ? Not at all ! The General begs to differ, and he has his reasons.
First of all, there’s the question of distance, carefully calculated. “Fuka is in Egyptian territory, at approximately 280 km. (175 miles) from the Libyan border, more than 600 km. (400 mi.) from the desert of Sirte, more than 1,000 km. (600 mi.) from the Sebha oasis [Fezzan zone] and more than 1,500 km (900 miles) from the Ghadames one.” Conclusion : “It would have been absolutely impossible for Preziosi to have been in those different places.” If the General says so…
In addition, “contact” would have had to have taken place in order for a child to have been conceived, and “Fuka is totally cut off.” Besides, war is serious business, and “Squadron personnel would not have been distracted by the presence of women” (sic). And finally, “a statement received from an [unnamed] comrade-in-arms of Preziosi’s, who shared his tent (re-sic)” definitively settles the question, because it “allows us to believe that these rumors are totally unfounded.” The conclusion to this brilliant demonstration reads like an order “Therefore, for my part, I am absolutely convinced that these rumors must be firmly denied.” Is that perfectly clear ?
Exit the Air Force archives, at least for the moment. The only hope at this stage of the investigation : retrace Albert Preziosi’s steps in Libya ourselves. Purpose : check if the dates really do coincide with those of Muammar Gaddafi’s conception. According to his official biography, the Guide of the Revolution was born on June 19, 1942 in Sirte, into a Bedouin family of the Senussi tribe, which originated in the Fezzan region, near the Niger-Chad border. Therefore, he must have been conceived in September or October 1941.
So where was handsome Albert just then ? Alas ! Although the few written accounts referring to Pilot Preziosi (historical accounts of the Normandy-Niemen squadron, aviation encyclopedias, history textbooks, etc.) do agree that the airman was stationed in Libya at some point, they diverge when it comes to precise dates and places. Nevertheless, among Preziosi’s many hypothetical Libyan itineraries, one trail stands out : that the pilot would have followed General Leclerc’s division in its famous Fezzan campaign. The French did in fact set up camp in this region in the 40s, before they began running it administratively, from 1943 to 1951. There is abundant historical data to back this up. General Leclerc left Africa to cut off the Italian and German army’s rear guard.
The first contingent of his division left England for Africa on August 30, 1940. As luck would have it, two of Preziosi’s fellow travelers – Jacques Soufflet and Yves Ezanno – left France in June, 1940. Like them, Preziosi probably hooked up with Leclerc’s division in northern Chad, then crossed southern Libya heading first for Egypt, then Rayak (Syria), where he is known to have arrived in late 1941. Taking those dates into account, the pilot could have met a Libyan woman from near Fezzan right around the time that Muammar Gaddafi was conceived. Preziosi might well be one of those airmen who dons mufti in wartime in order to increase their mission’s chances of success.
In this context, whatever Albert Preziosi’s few surviving comrades-in-arms have to say should be very useful indeed. After all, they’re the only ones left who can still connect the dots. Captain Georges Masurel is one of the last Free French members around to tell their epic tale. A mechanic turned gunner turned pilot, he ran into Albert Preziosi for the first time in Libya, in 1942, as part of the Alsace squadron. Later, he was Preziosi’s mechanic in “Neu-Neu”, the Normandy-Niemen squad’s nickname.
Confirming the thesis of Muammar Gaddafi Corsican sire, he declares that “Preziosi was bound to have been with the Leclerc division guys” prior to late 1941, when he made his way to the base in Rayak to help train pilots. “The Alsace squadron had a lot of men who had “done Africa” and therefore had been through Libya.” So had Georges Masurel heard about a liaison between his traveling companion and a Libyan woman ? “Oui,” he declares unequivocally, but because of a different incident.
A surprising one, which may have started everything… During the summer of 1942, while the French forces were fighting the Italians and the Germans at Bir Hakeim, in north-eastern Libya, Masurel and his fellow squadron members found out that the plane piloted by Preziosi, who is supposed to be heading for Tobruk, never arrived. “For us, he was MIA. And then, over a month later, he made it back to the base.” Surprise ! Shot down in mid-air, young Albert explains that he had been taken in by a Libyan family, who rescued him, tended his wounds, hiding him from the Germans all the while. “So he lived with them for at least three weeks.
That’s when a rumor started going around that he had had an affair with a Libyan woman while he was in the desert.” And what did the subject of the rumors have to say about them ? Discreet reply from Georges Masurel, “There was a war on, you know. We had other things to worry about. And Albert didn’t stay for long after he got back. I lost track of him for a while, because he was very sick and was sent to the hospital in Cairo. We didn’t hook up again until the Normandy-Niemen in late 1942.”
If you take Muammar Gaddafi’s official date of birth – June 1942 –Albert Preziosi’s spell with a Libyan tribe would have allowed the proud father to attend the birth of his offspring. But not to have sired him. Unless the Guide’s official biographers mixed up the Georgian calendar and the Muslim one… And just to keep everyone on their toes, in November 1978, on the occasion of the Muslim New Year, Gaddafi led a calendar revolution.
He decreed that the Muslim calendar shouldn’t start in the year 622 B.C. (the date when the Prophet emigrated to Medina, a reference for calendars throughout the Muslim world), but in 632, when he died… Which, according to some complicated (and somewhat chancy) calculations, could mean that little Gaddafi might have been born later. In 1943 for instance, just nine months after Preziosi was taken in by the Libyans. But handsome Albert’s fellow squadron members don’t sweat the details. For good reason ! To hear them tell it, the whole squadron was in on the secret.
When Commander Pierre Lorillon was assigned to Normandy-Niemen, in late 1943, Albert Preziosi had already died a hero’s death five months earlier. He remembers the discussions he had with the squad’s other pilots back then very well. For him, the Preziosi/Gaddafi connection is gospel. “We all knew that Albert had had a “Big Tent” Libyan girlfriend… (i.e. a noble young woman from the bourgeoisie). But we didn’t know much about it. The only thing we knew for sure was that he’d had a kid with her, and that the young woman’s uncle took care of things. He sent the kid to school overseas to calm things down, and for the sake of the tribe’s reputation. It was all kind of hush-hush. A European man having a kid with a Libyan woman could stir up trouble, including for Albert. And the English didn’t really approve of that sort of thing.” A valid reason that is also a good excuse for the French military hierarchy to follow its inclination to keep its mouth shut.
For the sake of the Guide of the Great Revolution’s legend, Muammar Gaddafi (also) has a Libyan father. Officially, anyway. His biographies mention one Abou Meniar Al-Gaddafi, a Bedouin goat-herder from the Sirte region. But oddly enough, there are no records of Abou Meniar’s birth, nor of his marriage to Aisha, Muammar’s mother. Nor does it say anywhere if Aisha was his only spouse. Record-keeping in Libya during the Italian colonial period having been a somewhat haphazard business, the confusion surrounding Gaddafi’s origins is all the greater. Take, for instance, the number of Gaddafi’s siblings, which varies depending on the biographies. According to some, he was an only son. For others, he had many brothers. And according to the American journalist John Cooley, whose Libyan Sandstorm, a well-researched book about Gaddafi, was published in 1982, he has just one brother, Sayed Kaddam…
We still needed to know what the Preziosi family thinks about their prodigal pilot’s comrades in arms’ beliefs. A touchy task, when you realize that most of the Preziosi men go into the service or are very close to the military. Sired by a policeman originally from Fontana, in Castagniccia, and married to a girl from Paoli, in Nocario, just a few sharp turns in the road away, Albert had a brother, four years older than he. Jean chose to follow in his father’s footsteps, and reached the rank of General of the Gendarmerie. On July 28, 1997, his widow stood in for him at the first ceremony commemorating Albert’s disappearance 54 years prior.
The commemoration took place in the village of Vezzani, thanks to the efforts of the Commander of Air Force Base 126, in Ventiseri-Solenzara, which, as it happens, bears the name of Captain Albert Preziosi. Members of the local chapter of the National Association of Air Force Reserve Officers (ANORAA) were particularly active in preparing the event. One of them in particular : a certain François… Preziosi.
As it turns out, François is the son of a cousin of Albert’s. A reserve officer, he helped collect elements from his great-uncle’s biography for the Association, which he is a member of, simply by methodically researching all the files available and open to the public. “I’ve been hearing about the Gaddafi connection for as long as I can remember, and I’ve tried to find out more,” he acknowledges. “I even asked an acquaintance to question some people he knew who had been working for the “Native Affairs” office in Fezzan 50 years ago.”
Even for him, the reply was curt and definitive : “professional secret”. As though a dark veil still shrouded the whole affair. But like his sister Laetitia, a Parisian lawyer, François Preziosi remembers the scene one evening in the 70s when Albert’s mother, seated right in front of the TV, suddenly shouted, “Look, it’s Albert !” It was a report showing images of the young Libyan leader.
“The whole idea is based on the physical resemblance between the two men,” according to Jacques-Antoine Preziosi, one of Albert’s nephews. A lawyer in Marseille, he tends to think the whole thing I much ado about nothing. “There is absolutely no physical evidence of any kind establishing family ties. We don’t have any documents mentioning it, and Albert didn’t leave any letters. So as far as we, the direct descendants, are concerned, there’s nothing to the story.” Fair enough, but did they ever try to get in touch with Gaddafi or his entourage ?
Created on March 15, 1941, in Ismailia (Egypt), the first air squadron (EFC1) was composed of airmen who had joined the Free French in June, 1940. In April, 1941, the squadron was engaged in defending Tobruk, which was under siege from the Afrikakorps (a German army corps sent to Libya to support the Italians against the British). After the allied withdrawal, the squadron became involved in ground attacks and protecting Navy convoys at sea.
In late 1941, it headed for Syria, where it was disbanded, in order to make way for the Alsace Squadron (GC1). Placed first under the orders of Commander Jean-Louis Tulasne, then underCommander Joseph Pouliquen, the new squad was originally responsible for convoying new planes. After having served in the defense of Bir Hakeim (June 1942), it participated in the defense of Alexandria. In September, 1942, Commander Pouliquen was put in charge of building a new airborne squadron to fight on the Eastern front in support of Soviet troops ; this was the group that would become the “Normandy” Squadron” (GC3). Composed, on a voluntary basis, of French pilots and mechanics, many of whom came from the Alsace squadron, it left the Rayak air force base in November, 1942, to head for Russia.
“We’ve never asked them anything whatsoever. It would be highly inappropriate. Totally out of line. Can you see yourself asking Gaddafi about it ? Casting aspersions on his mother ? If I were him, I would be very offended. It’s probably enough to get yourself locked up.” Yet Jacques-Antoine admits that over the years, several people have been in touch with him to ask if his uncle was Colonel Gaddafi’s father. A few years ago, their numbers included the representatives of an industrial baron whose name he won’t divulge. The whole thing made Jacques-Antoine see red. “What was that industrialist thinking ? That he was going to use our so-called connections to do business with Libya”
Clearly, the businessman wasn’t the only “influential person” to enquire about Muammar’s sire. In 1999, a high-ranking French officer wrote to the head of the Air Force historical service, General Silvestre de Sacy, to try to find out if the Corsican connection was legit. The service shelved the query (see box). Motif : during the Libyan campaign, French officers had no contact with the locals, and certainly not the local women. But surviving members of Normandy-Niemen stick to a different version of events. So the case for Gaddafi’s Corsican ancestry isn’t closed. Far from it. Even if the only irrefutable proof would be a DNA test. And as for asking the Colonel for a sample…
Translated from the French by : Regan Kramer
TO SEE THE MAP OF GADDAFI’S PUTATIVE FATHER’S PATH, THAT’S HERE
TO READ THE FRENCH VERSION, THAT’S HERE
TO SEE THE VIDEO, THAT’S HERE
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