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The man in hospital, however, still had more than a month of additional work to be done, Abuzgaya estimated. The program is fully funded by the Libyan government.

“The prosthesis is a long process,” said Abuzgaya, an orthopedic surgeon in Ajax, Ont., just east of Toronto. “You first have to deal with the residual limb, or the stump. You have to shape it in right shape, and then you have to strengthen the core and the muscles around it so it can take the prosthesis. Then you have to produce a socket, which is the piece that sits on that limb.”

Abuzgaya didn’t know how long each had been in Canada, but he said it had been several months at least.

He described the victim as “very quiet” and said his impression of the younger man was that he drank and partied a lot.

Abuzgaya said he was surprised when he received word from the Libyan embassy.

“I don’t even know why this has happened. I can’t make sense of it because we’ve never had anything even close to it. They (rebel fighters) usually get along reasonably well.”

El Bishty said he and other Libyans had shared iftar, the evening breaking of fast for Ramadan, with both men about 10 days earlier.

“They used to be friends,” the doctor said, though he didn’t know if the two knew each other in Libya. “We brought them the food, the dinner, to them in the hotel.

“I met them many times, they were OK.”

El Bishty said neither man indicated at the dinner that anything was wrong, but he suggested psychological stress and the increasing turmoil Libya could be a cause for the tension.