An hour after the agreed time, a group of men in jeans and T-shirts, looking more like a hip-hop band than a security outfit, walked quickly towards our table. Seif had chosen his entourage carefully. With him he had Mohammad al-Hawni, a 65-year-old lawyer based in Rome, from where he served Libyan–Italian business interests. We dubbed him the Intellectual, as his main purpose was to impress upon us that some of Seif’s aides read books.
This is hilarious. The insecurities of the absurdly powerful.
