Gaddafi's whereabouts remain a mystery but in Tripoli, the masses want two things: retribution and democracy

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

The mood was festive. The crowd included women in hijabs wearing rebel shawls, an elderly man in a dapper suit and a group of traffic policemen sporting their white, colonial-style uniforms. After Friday prayers several hundred people poured out on to the marble steps of the Jamal Abdul Nasser mosque, Tripoli's biggest.

And then the chanting began. First: "God is great." Next: "Death to Gaddafi." Then: "All Libyans are brothers." Then, once more: "Death to Gaddafi." A rebel fighter shinned up an elegant art deco lamppost; he began wafting a large red, green, and black flag. It felt like a cathartic moment – the first Friday since the dramatic fall of Tripoli on Sunday, and the first in a Libya without Muammar Gaddafi. Meanwhile, Gaddafi's whereabouts remain a mystery.

After 10 minutes, the people moved off. They spilled into Algeria Square – with its glorious Italianate post office and neat palm tree roundabout. Tentatively at first, they kept going, marching and crying slogans down a shady avenue of shuttered tea shops.

This was new Libya's first political march – something that only a few days ago would have been unthinkable, and would have been broken up with beatings and bullets.

Libya's opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) gave its first press conference in Tripoli on Thursday evening. It was a chaotic late-night affair; so far nobody has had much of a chance to sketch out a new political system. On Friday, however, the marchers agreed that after 42 years of dictatorship and iron-fisted personalist rule the country should become a European-style democracy.

"I want to live in a democratic country. It's the most important thing for me and my children," Naser al-Shahawi said, emerging from the mosque. "This is what the people want. We also want an Islamic country. But I don't think that democracy is an enemy of Islam."

The 48-year-old international lawyer said he wasn't greatly impressed by the NTC – pointing out that several of its leaders "had been with Gaddafi".

Who, then, did he think could be Libya's new prime minister? "Maybe me," he replied. "Now is the first time that anybody can be prime minister, or president." Then he admitted: "I have never voted in my life."

Shahawi, who had spent a year and half living in Cardiff, said he was studying for a PhD in international law. Asked what should happen to Gaddafi when justice eventually caught up with him, he was brutally succinct.

"He should die," he said, then insisted that the former dictator should be tried inside the country, rather than extradited to the international criminal court, where a heap of indictments await.

A group of fighters then expressed their feelings in verbal form: "Fuck you Gaddafi," they shouted.

In the central Tripoli district of Souk al-Jummah, a group of young rebels said, unprompted, said they wanted Westminster-style democracy. "We want the same kind that you have in the UK," Sami Jamhur said.

Jamhur had been a taxi driver but had been forced to sell his vehicle to make ends meet. Here, he was manning a citizens' checkpoint at Swalim Street, perched on his bike and holding an AK-47 assault rifle.

"I want to travel to London. I'm fed up with Libya," he explained, but then said he was enthusiastic about Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the NTC and front-runner to be Libya's new leader. "He's a good man. A lot of people like Jibril." But there was also a recognition that it could be a hard task to introduce democratic ideas to many ordinary Libyans. For most, the only widely-available political text has been the Green Book – Gaddafi's bizarre anti-parliamentary treatise.

"People are ready for democracy. But we don't have money. We don't speak English very well. Gaddafi deliberately kept us ignorant," Jamhur added.

When, then, should elections in Libya take place? "Next spring," Jamhur suggested.

He conceded that it would be difficult to build a new Libyan state with Gaddafi still on the run, and that the deposed despot could cast a shadow over any new electoral process. People's lives would also have to improve, he said. "I don't have a car. I don't have money. I don't live in the Marriott. Gaddafi had all those things."

Over at Tripoli's Mitiga hospital, doctors were remarkably upbeat about Libya's prospects.

Dr Salem Sagher pointed out that the "chaps" manning improvised checkpoints across the capital had so far behaved well – a good sign for the country's nascent democracy.

He said that Libya's entire mental world had been turned upside down in just a few days. "If you'd asked me two weeks ago what I thought about Gaddafi I wouldn't have answered. In fact I've been expecting this for 30 years," he said.

His colleague Dr Ali Mansouri said that the last time he voted was in 1964 or 1965, as a young man, living in a constitutional monarchy.

Gaddafi ousted its head of state, King Idris, four or five years later, and there hasn't been an election since, he explained. "What we need now is free speech and free thought."

Did he think Jibril was the man who might deliver this? "He's a good person, a moderate guy," he replied.

But didn't all revolutions go wrong, beginning in excitement and ending in disillusionment? "At the moment I feel enormous happiness. This is shared by all Libyans," Sagher said.

Most of Tripoli's streets remain deserted. But there were a few promising signs on Friday that normal life is slowly returning after a week of fighting and mayhem.

A few shops reopened, mostly in Tripoli's suburbs, and there were queues at the tills – but orderly ones.

The city is now festooned with new, anti-Gaddafi graffiti, some in English. One reads: "Game over Gerdafei."

Opposition militia from cities outside Tripoli such as Misrata remained camped in the capital. But the fighters' claim that this six-month conflict can be wrapped up in the next few days, as the last loyalists realise that Libya has permanently changed and now has a democratic future.

"I think four-five-seven days it will all be over," Abdul Salam said. Perhaps.

Street life

A degree of normality has returned to Tripoli, with more people and traffic on the streets. However, most of the capital city's services are still not functioning.

Rubbish is piled everywhere, there is no running water, and a treacherously erratic power supply. Electricity returned to the capital two days ago – only to conk out again on Friday afternoon. No one seems to know when it might be turned back on.

The water has not worked for the past four days; water tankers have been delivering emergency supplies to some residential areas.

A few shops have reopened; it's possible to buy soft drinks and a few dry supplies. But there are no markets, and certainly no meat.

There is no petrol on sale in Tripoli – hence the lack of traffic, but it is available in other parts of the country such as the western mountains, and imported from Tunisia.

The local mobile phone network Libyana, works only sometimes.

In areas away from the fighting the security situation remains stable, with citizens' checkpoints made up of local rebels set up every few hundred metres.

The first traffic policemen were spotted on Tripoli's streets on Friday – a hopeful sign.