The Nato bombing campaign which fatally weakened Col. Muammar Gad-dafi’s rule had a secret asset: a 24-year-old Libyan woman who spent months spying on military facilities and passing on details to the alliance.
The woman, operating under the codename “Nomidia”, used elaborate methods to evade capture — constantly changing her location, using multiple mobile telephone SIM cards and hiding her activities from all but close family members.
Her biggest protection against arrest by Col. Gaddafi’s security forces though was her gender: as a young woman in Libya’s conservative Muslim society, they did not suspect her. “I was not on the radar,” the woman, an engineer, said in an interview, two weeks on from a rebellion that broke Col. Gaddafi’s control over the Libyan capital after 42 years in power.
“They were concentrating more on the guys and it was almost impossible to think that a girl was doing all of this.”
Nomidia spoke to Reuters on condition that her real identity not be revealed: she said that while Tripoli was now under control of a new interim government, there was still a “fifth column” of Gaddafi loyalists who might target her or her family. The account she gave of her activities was corroborated by two other people who were part of an underground anti-Gaddafi network. — Reuters