The capture of Gadhafi's son

Saif al-Islam, son of the late former Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, sits after his capture, with his fingers wrapped in bandages and his legs covered with a blanket, at an undisclosed location, in this photograph aired on Free Libya TV on November 19, 2011.

OBARI, Libya - The chic black sweater and jeans were gone. So too the combat khaki T-shirt of his televised last stand in Tripoli. Designer stubble had become bushy black beard after months on the run.
But the rimless glasses, framing those piercing eyes above that straight fine nose, gave him away despite the flowing nomad robes held close across his face.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, doctor of the London School of Economics, was now a prisoner, bundled aboard an old Libyan air force transport plane near the oil-drilling outpost of Obari, deep in the Sahara desert.
The interim government's spokesman billed it as the "final act of the Libyan drama". But there would be no closing soliloquy from the lead player, scion of the dynasty that Muammar Gadhafi had once hoped might rule Africa.
A Reuters reporter aboard the flight approached the 39-year-old prisoner as he huddled on a bench at the rear of the growling, Soviet-era Antonov. The man who held court to the world's media earlier was now on a 90-minute flight bound for the town of Zintan near Tripoli.
He sat frowning, silent and seemingly lost in thought for part of the way, nursing his right hand, bandaged around the thumb and two fingers. At other times he chatted calmly with his captors and even posed for a picture.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi (2nd R) is pictured standing in a plane in Zintan November 19, 2011.

In the dead of night
Gadhafi's run had come to an end just a few hours earlier, at dead of night on a desert track, as he and a handful of trusted companions tried to thread their way through patrols of former rebel fighters intent on blocking their escape over the border.
"At the beginning he was very scared. He thought we would kill him," said Ahmed Ammar, one of the 15 fighters who captured Gadhafi. The fighters, from Zintan's Khaled bin al-Waleed Brigade, intercepted the fugitives' two 4x4 vehicles 40 miles out in the desert.
"But we talked to him in a friendly way and made him more relaxed and we said, 'We won't hurt you'."
Saif al-Islam was the smiling face of the Muammar Gadhafi's power structure. He won personal credibility at the highest echelons of international society, especially in London, where he helped tidy up the reputation of Libya via a personal charitable foundation.
Facing death penalty
Caught exactly a month after his father met a violent end, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi is wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity. Libya's interim leaders want him to stand trial at home and say they won't extradite him; the justice minister said he faces the death penalty.

His attempt to flee began on October 19, under NATO fire from the tribal bastion of Bani Walid, 100 miles from the capital. Ammar and his fellow fighters said they believed he had been hiding since then in the desolate tracts of the mountainous Brak al-Shati region.Aides who were captured at Bani Walid said Saif al-Islam's convoy had been hit by a NATO air strike. Since then, there had been speculation that nomadic tribesmen once lionised by his father might have been working to spirit him across Libya's southern borders - perhaps, like his surviving brothers, sister and mother, into Niger or Algeria.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi is pictured sitting in a plane in Zintan November 19, 2011.

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi is pictured sitting in a plane in Zintan November 19, 2011