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PETER'S NEW YORK, Tuesday, November 1, 2011--Amazing as it may seem, a beautiful European model has been relieved of an important German contract for expressing honestly-held sentiments about Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi and Qaddafi's son Muatassim whom she reportedly used to date. The two men were said to have been murdered last month by National Transitional Council forces after allegedly being captured while leaving the Libyan city of Sirte in a convoy.
Top model Vanessa Hessler by Wikimedia Commons
"The Gadhafi family is not as they are being depicted, they are normal people," 23 year old Vanessa Hessler is reported to have told the magazine Diva e Donna in a published interview.
"I didn't have any contact with him (Muatassim) since the uprising broke out, but our relationship was one of passion," said the Associated Press, quoting from the magazine article. In the article, Hessler describes the Libyan "rebel" NTC movement as consisting of "people who don't know what they are doing," and said she shed tears for Libya, AP reported.
For her candid assessment of the Qaddafi family and her relationship with its members, Hessler seems to be paying the ultimate price. According to AP, communications firm Telefonica Germany, along with Alice, a subsidiary, will disown their relationship with the accomplished model, who has been a prominent presence in German advertising.
A spokesperson for the media conglomerate, Albert Fetsch, told AP Monday that the company would remove all traces of the model from the company's web site, because Hessler stood by her comments.
Others who have worked with the Qaddafi family have reported a similarly congenial portrait of the family, and are also paying the price.
In a wide-ranging and detailed interview with Stewart Bell of Canada's National Post, security specialist Gary Peters, a member of the security detail for Muammar Qaddafi's son Saadi, defended his client.
"The man's a gentleman, non-violent," NP quoted Peters as saying. "They said that he's the leader of a military unit. Bulls--, he's not."
In the interview, Peters described Muammar Qaddafi as "very intimidating," but said Saadi was a "very nice man, very educated, very nice guy."
Peters, a Canadian immigrant from Australia, said he believed Canada had sided with the wrong people in the Libyan conflict. In what was billed as a humanitarian campaign to protect civilians from Qaddafi's government, Canada joined NATO in an aggressive seven-month bombing campaign that reduced much of the prospering North African state to rubble. Upwards of a hundred thousand people may have lost their lives in the conflict. NATO used a nascent rebellion and a United Nations Security Council resolution as a pretext for its intervention, the legitimacy of which is being contested on several fronts.
The National Post said Peters "supported neither the Gaddafi regime nor the National Transitional Council, but believed Canada had backed the wrong side in the conflict" and "accused the rebels of committing atrocities and said NATO had bombed civilian homes."
Peters said he provided security for a fact-finding mission to Libya during the NATO intervention, NP reported. The mission visited 72 sites, but only eight of these were military installations, Peters told NP.
Like Hessler, Peters has paid the price for his loyalty and outspokenness.
"All my clients I had here, they've all gone," Peters said. "They all boycotted, which is fine."
Peters left Libya after suffering a bullet wound subsequent to escorting Saadi to Niger, where the Qaddafi son remains. After a firefight during which he said five gunmen lost their lives after firing on his three-vehicle convoy, Peters caught a flight to Canada. He lost so much blood from the untreated wound that upon disembarking in Toronto, he felt faint and was treated at a local hospital, according to the NP interview. Peters has since left Canada for an undisclosed location, NP reported.
Saadi is being sought by Interpol, which in September issued an arrest warrant for the athlete on an assortment of stitched-together charges that some see as retribution for his being a member of the Qaddafi family or part of an effort to pre-empt a continuation of the Qaddafi regime by his sons.
[Vanessa Hessler has an active modeling career in Europe. Wikipedia reports that her father is American, her mother, Italian, and that she resides in Rome, but spent time in Washington D.C. as a child. PETER'S NEW YORK originally reported that Hessler was American. Her citizenship was not clarified at press time.]
