PORTLAND, Ore. — Family, friends and supporters celebrated the homecoming Tuesday of Jamal Tarhuni, a Libyan-American businessman whose return to the U.S. from North Africa was delayed by a month after he was detained for questioning by the FBI.

A burst of applause and cheering went up as Tarhuni emerged into the waiting area at Portland International Airport after clearing the last bureaucratic hurdle of his trip – a two-hour wait to clear customs. His youngest son, 10-year-old Rasheed, armed with helium balloons, stood at the front of a welcome line of men.

The tone of the homecoming quickly became serious again, as Tarhuni reassured others about the status of another member of the Libyan-American community – Mustafa Elogbi, 60, who remains in Tunisia after being barred at the last minute from joining Tarhuni and their attorney, Tom Nelson, on the flight home.

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Tarhuni, 55, left for Libya in October to deliver medical supplies to hospitals and refugee camps, but he said that when he tried to return on Jan. 17, he was denied boarding and directed to the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, where he was questioned extensively by FBI agents.

At the Portland airport, he addressed the gathered press with a message to the FBI:

"We value your work when you stop criminals," Tarhuni said. "We do not value your work when you do not do your homework and stop innocent people."

He called his ordeal a shock and said he was particularly disappointed in the U.S. Embassy.

"I was not able to get straight answers or help you would expect from your embassy abroad," he said. "I was not even able to get basic information on who made the decision to stop me from coming home."

Tuesday’s reunion with his wife, Nariman Samed, and four children ended a month of uncertainty for Tarhuni, a naturalized American citizen, but it did nothing to clarify why he was held or whether he faces further questioning. He does not know whether he is on the government’s secret no-fly list, which would prevent him from flying back to his native Libya or in U.S. airspace.

The uncertainty around Elogbi remains, although he has booked a flight home from Tunis on Sunday.

American aid worker: U.S. bars my return

What gives? Another American caught in no-fly limbo

No-fly Americans split up to fly home

"I’m really happy that Jamal Tarhuni is coming home, but I’m really ready for my dad to come home," said Elogbi’s daughter, Allaa, 20, fighting back tears. "(This return) does give me hope that within a week my dad will be here. … But so far you don’t know if you can trust them or not, you know? There is no reason my dad should not be home today. There is no reason he shouldn’t have been home last month."

The crowd of about 40 people on hand to greet Tarhuni was a mixture of family and friends from Muslim and interfaith communities.

"What brings me out is injustice, not allowing someone to come home because they are Muslim or have an Arabic name, or a foreign-sounding name – the nemesis du jour," said Pam Allee, a Portland resident who came to show support but does not know the families.

Karen Redington, a Christian who said she has worked with Tarhuni on interfaith events, carried an American flag and a sign that read: "I’m sorry."

"I am so sorry that this would happen to anyone, let alone somebody who is one of the most gentle, humble, caring men, who has taken the time to go back to his country of origin to bring millions and millions of dollars of humanitarian aid through Medical Teams International," she said. "I am so sorry. This does not represent this community; this does not represent this country."

No one was more relieved at Tarhuni’s return than Rasheed, who was looking forward to spending some quality time with his dad after an absence of four months.

"He missed my birthday, so he said we’re going to have a cake and we’re going to go out and we’re going to invite my friends, maybe go to Evergreen waterpark. Or we’re going to take trip to Disneyland," he said.

Going forward, he said, he’s going to keep his eye on his dad:

"I’m going to hug him so much and never let him go back anywhere else, and tell him, ‘If you’re going somewhere, the whole family comes with you.’"

 

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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

ON THE ROAD TO SIRTE, Libya – It started with confusion. There were rumors on Twitter and then reports by foreign media that Sirte, Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown, had fallen.

A military commander from the Misrata brigade told us "there were still houses to clear," not quite confirming or denying the news. 

When we called the National Transitional Committee's press office, a man said, "Sirte is finished." We asked him how he knew. His reply was, "It was on TV."

En route to Sirte, we began hearing from militiamen at checkpoints that Gadhafi had been captured and was being brought back to Misrata, home to one of the strongest militias that rose up against his 42-year rule.

With no cell signal and amidst general chaos, we couldn't verify anything on the ground.  The only thing that was clear was the gathering force of exultation that was evident even on this lonely stretch of road in the North African desert.

---

‘Blood did not run in vain!’
We decided to set up for a live shot beside the highway instead of continuing onto Sirte.

Vehicles painted in the colors of the new Libyan flag began gathering around a checkpoint and bridge behind us. Rebel forces driving back west towards Misrata shouted in jubilation. Men fired their guns into the air. Others shouted, “Our martyrs' blood did not run in vain!"

We began hearing that Gadhafi had been killed. Fighters stopped to show us cellphone footage purportedly of his body.  In one video, the body was in the back of a vehicle with a white cloth wrapped around his head.  In another, the body was shirtless and on the ground; men picked him up and turned him over and then covered him.

"He was shot in the neck," said Fathi Bashagha, a Misrata military commander and NATO liaison. He was trying to get back to Misrata, ahead of a large convoy rumored to be carrying Gadhafi's body. 

Moments later, a large convoy of 18-wheelers, pick-up trucks, SUVs, and sedans drove by on the outside lane. 

Shadowing them were a ragtag bunch of vehicles driven by cheering militiamen – so caught up in the moment that a couple rear-ended each other, creating a small traffic jam in front of us.

Grim souvenirs
As we continued to try to get official confirmation from either the Misrata military council or the interim government in Tripoli, more fighters stopped to show us "souvenirs." 

One man had a military cap he claimed belonged to Gadhafi. Another showed a ring, a hat, a nine-millimeter handgun, and a bottle of shampoo that he said were taken from the basement housing the former leader.

But by far the most troubling sights were the bodies of what fighters claimed were Moatassam, Gadhafi’s son, and Abu Bakr Yunis, one of Gadhafi's most trusted senior military leaders.  The body of the former appeared to have a bullet hole in the back of his neck; half of the latter's face was a strange shade of blue.

And then there were those who were alive. 
A truck drove by with dozens of men crowded into the back; we assumed they were prisoners because they were not cheering.

One sedan stopped in front of our van.  Rebel fighters proudly scrambled out to show off two men – black Africans, mercenaries perhaps – tied up in their trunk, alive; they looked alert and stared at us quizzically. 

NBC News’ Correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin answered reader questions about Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s death and what it means for Libya and the region.

Mohyeldin covered the Middle East for several years as a correspondent for Al Jazeera. He reported extensively on the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia. He has spent time reporting from Libya and interviewed Gadhafi several years ago.

---

Readers asked him questions about what Gadhafi’s death means for the Middle East? How his death will reverberate across the region and affect the other countries still revolting against authoritarian regimes, like in Syria, or trying to sort out what democracy means, like in Egypt.

Click below to replay the chat.

 

 

By John Boxley, NBC News producer

MISRATA, Libya – A tour of downtown Misrata is a vivid reminder of the impact war has had on Libya.

Devastation is all around, with bombed out buildings,   torched cars and bullet-riddled houses.

For more than three months, revolutionary fighters battled against forces loyal to former Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi here in downtown Misrata. The battle claimed hundreds of lives, but the rebel fighters emerged victorious.

The fighting is now over, but driving around town, we came across an unusual sight: Staged in front of a vegetable market stood an assortment of military weaponry.

There was everything – mortars, rocket launchers, cannons, tanks – all on display like a museum.

Grandy Maiteeg, our local fixer, told us that they were “Gadhafi's weapons.”

---

Apparently Gadhafi’s forces fled Misrata in such a hurry that they left many of their weapons behind.

So volunteers went street by street, gathering them up. Once they were all collected, the question was asked, what do we do with them?

They decided to put them on display on the city's main thoroughfare for all to see.

Aliywa Hdy, one of the organizers of the makeshift museum, told me, "We want people to know what Gadhafi used against the Libya people."

Each day crowds gather for a look at the arsenal. They take pictures while the children climb on tanks and cannons as if this were a playground.

But this is not all fun and games. For some, this exhibit is difficult to look at.

Ibrahaim Elglay stopped by to take pictures. "Seeing these weapons,” he said in a somber tone as he turned to look at a destroyed building behind him, "and seeing the damage they caused, it’s painful to see."

Imed Mohammad Bennor's home was damaged during the fighting. He said the display makes him sad, but at the same time it makes him happy, because, he said: "We won.”

But Grandy Maiteeg has a different view.  "I hate this place," he said. The 25-year-old lost a lot of friends during the conflict, and he said the exhibit brings back too many painful memories.

The armaments sit on display, a reminder of an important and difficult chapter in this city's history.
 

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

MISRATA, Libya – It was a sign that perhaps life was getting back to some kind of normal in Libya. 

Last weekend, Turkish Airlines resumed direct commercial flights from Istanbul to Tripoli.  One week later, the Boeing jet was packed with families with very small children returning to the Libyan capital, despite the fact that the NATO no-fly zone remains in effect.

On the ground, it wasn’t quite normal yet.

The drive from Tripoli to Misrata, which is only 120 miles, takes between two and three hours these days because of the series of checkpoints that dot the main road, slowing traffic down every few miles.  The rebel militiamen are still on the look-out for pro-Gadhafi supporters.  Some are more diligent than others, stopping vehicles to ask for IDs; others wave them on with nary a glance.

In Misrata itself, life was definitely not quite normal.

---

The main strip that runs through the town, Tripoli Street, was a key battleground and the site of fierce fighting that broke out in February and lasted three months.  Burnt-out buildings line both sides of the thoroughfare today; those that remain somewhat intact bear scars from gunfire and heavy artillery.

“It was scary,” said Mohammed Abdul Majid, a Misrata-born native whose parents came from Sudan.  “We saw all the firing everywhere.”

His home is just off Tripoli Street, on the second floor of a building pockmarked with bullet holes, but the fire damage was so bad that he moved to his sister’s place across town.

When we ran into him, he and a friend were trying to open the roll-down steel gate to the first floor storage room – the fighting had bent it out of shape, and they couldn’t roll it back up.

Abdul Majid wanted to store some new appliances, including a refrigerator he said he’d bought before the war.  “This is for me.  Before, I needed [to have a] party,” he laughed.  “I will fix the current home.  And then have a party.”

Down Tripoli Street, Mahmood al Gazil was fixing up a photo studio also badly damaged by the fighting earlier this year.  The owner had hired him to repair the store, and he was working alone.

“A lot of the guys who own the shops are on the frontline, so they are busy,” he said.  In the meantime, he’s working without pay.  “There is no money right now.”

And what if the people who are supposed to pay him die fighting on the frontline before he gets paid?  He smiled and shrugged, “I
am not worried, because then they died for our country.”

In the meantime, al Gazil said he has enough savings to see him and his family through for the foreseeable future. 

Mahdi al Toumy, a university student, was sitting in the shade of a corner building on Tripoli Street; his family is one of the few still living there.

“There is maybe one other family in the area still living here,” he told us.  “All the neighbors have gone, staying with relatives in other neighborhoods.”

Traffic appears normal even if the buildings don’t. At one intersection there was even a policeman in a pristine, though slightly wrinkled, white uniform directing cars.

At a villa now housing the office of Doctors Without Borders, Mohammed Hasb el Rasoul said that despite the heavy fighting in nearby Sirte, they did not have any injured from the frontlines coming through the hospitals or clinics in Misrata.

“It was a kind of a big mess back in July,” said el Rasoul, a Sudanese man who has been living in Misrata since 1993 and now works as a radio operator for MSF. 

But perhaps the most bemusing sight is one that suggests just how much Libya teeters between normal and not normal.

Everywhere there are pick-up trucks driving around with mounted anti-aircraft guns or 50-calibre guns in the back, wrapped in some sort of covering, their tell-tale barrels pointing toward the sky.  It suggests that the fighting is done.

At least for now.

By John Boxley, NBC News Producer

TRIPOLI – They arrive by the carload day and night: Liberated Libyans coming to experience Tripoli's latest tourist attraction.

It’s called Bab Al-Azizyia, but it is better known as Col. Moammar Gadhafi's compound.

For most Libyans it was strictly off-limits during Gadhafi's 42-year reign of Libya – but not anymore.

During the weeks since Libya’s rebels entered Tripoli and the longtime dictator vanished into the night, the sprawling complex has become the must-see spot in town.

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"This site belongs to the Libyan people now,” said Aman, a 27-year-old who didn’t give her last name while she visited the compound for the first time Thursday. 

The compound, which stretches across more than two miles, includes military barracks and was the main base of operations for Gadhafi, his family had a house on the property.

The compound has clearly seen better days. After the six-month conflict, the walls are covered in graffiti and bullet holes. Torched cars and army tanks litter the landscape. There is rubble and debris everywhere.

The building where the Gadhafi family once lived is in ruins.  It looks unstable, but that hasn't scared off Libyan families, looking to see how the former dictator once lived, and of course, posing for pictures.

Abdulla-Abuassara, 42, brought his six children for a visit Thursday. He said he wanted to show his kids where “the liar” lived.

While we chatted, Abuassara turned to look at the building behind him, smiled and said the compound had "the smell of freedom."

One of the most popular attractions is the compound’s mysterious underground tunnels. Did Gadhafi use the tunnels to escape? Young thrill seekers bravely climb down the small manholes, eager and curious.

And what's a tourist attraction without souvenirs? No worry, they've figured that out. Vendors are on hand, with an assortment of Libyan mementos, from watches to flags.

Ibrahim, a 25-year-old banker who also gave only his first name, came to do some shopping and to see what he calls "the freedom of Libya.”

But not all Libyans are happy to see what has become of Bab Al-Azizyia.  Mohammad Ali, another visitor, said he wants to see the compound rebuilt, the way it used to be.

By John Boxley, NBC News Producer

TRIPOLI, Libya – They may have been small in number, but their message to David Gerbi was loud and clear: Get out.

About a dozen protesters took to Tripoli’s streets Thursday with signs that read, “Get out David, we don't have a place for Zionism.”

Gerbi is a Libyan Jew whose family fled their homeland 44 years ago. After years of living in Italy, Gerbi, 56, returned to Libya this summer to help with fight with the rebels and oust the longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

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Gerbi’s hope now is to be part of the new Libya – which for him means restoring Tripoli’s main synagogue.

Jews have a long history in Libya – dating back some 2,000 years. Under Italy’s Fascist leaders during World War II they were subjected to anti-Semitic laws and some were deported to concentration camps in North Africa and Europe. Anti-Jewish attacks continued after the war, so many fled to Israel. Under Gadhafi, the situation worsened and those who were left were forced into exile.

Gerbi says he got permission from a local sheik to restore the synagogue. But on Thursday his efforts were thwarted by the small group of protesters.

The protest was organized through Facebook, but just 12 people showed up. They say they have no interest in seeing the refurbishment of synagogues in their city.

"The synagogue should remain closed,” one man said to me. He added that if the synagogue reopened it would be used for “bad intentions.” 

 

By Mike Taibbi, NBC News Correspondent
 
TRIPOLI – When Libya's rebel brigades roared into this capital city on Aug. 21, Majdi Errabti  felt he had to be a part of the excitement.  

"I told my mother, 'You cannot stop me from joining the fighting, because if I don't, it will be the shame of my life, and for the life of all my children.' She said she understood,” he said.

The 28-year-old Errabti grabbed a gun, but he never fired it. Instead, with rebel checkpoints already set up and the city clearly secure, Errabti left the fighters he'd joined and retreated in a mood of triumph to his neighborhood in Tripoli's Old City.

His excitement unabated, he went to his mosque, turned on the loudspeakers, and shouted into the microphone reserved for the call to prayer. "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar..." God is Great.

"My mother heard it," he said with a smile, remembering the moment. "She said she recognized my voice, and was proud of me."

A month later, though, there's been nothing to match the high of that moment of pure celebration.

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Longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi is gone, but in hiding and still issuing threats through messages carried by a sympathetic news channel in Syria. In two cities long favored by his regime – his hometown of Sirte and the tribal town of Bani Walid – Gadhafi loyalists have refused each offer of peaceful surrender and answered each rebel advance over the past week with blistering storms of artillery and sniper fire. The impasse has left the anti-Gadhafi forces confused, humiliated, and counting their dead.

In Tripoli and in Libya's second city, Benghazi, the National Transitional Council – though recognized by scores of countries and by the United Nations as Libya's official governing authority – is struggling to actually begin governing. With squabbling rife in the top ranks, they've failed in a first attempt to name a cabinet.

Tripoli, with more than 1 million residents, is peaceful and surging with new life in the absence of all but celebratory gunfire, but there's an uneasy undercurrent in the cafe talk about the NTC's military and political problems.
 
After a six-month sprint made possible by the NATO bombing campaign and the support of an international coalition, the  ragtag rebellion  that toppled Gadhafi  appears to have hit a wall. The anti-Gadhafi forces can't seem to find a way to finish the job of winning the war; equally, it appears they're struggling in the beginning stages of winning the peace.
                                                                                                                                                                           
Struggles under Gadhafi regime
It doesn’t faze Errabti. "No, I'm not worried," he says. "It's a big country with different cultures, from Misrata to the mountains of Nafusa, from Bengazi to Tripoli. It takes time..."

Errabti's English is terrific. "Is there some shop you specifically have in mind?" he asked me when I told him I needed to go into the city center. He'd studied English in college and thought that even under Gadhafi his proficiency in one of Tripoli's popular secondary languages, along with computer literacy, would gain him a career.

But it didn't work out that way. Life under Gadhafi, he learned, was a relentless uphill swim against the twin waves of cronyism and a kind of institutional torpor that made the white-collar office jobs he sampled something akin to slow torture.

"I went to one insurance company to work," he said. "But the people there, they didn't even deserve to be working. They couldn't write, they didn't care. I couldn't take it, being there. I had to quit."
  
Errabti even engaged in some cronyism of his own: A family friend who was Gadhafi's minister of justice offered him a job teaching English to the prisoners in one of the regime's notorious jails.

It turned out to be miserable. The conditions were horrific, the men just husks of human beings.

And so he quit again, But, with growing responsibilities and living expenses, he needed to raise money, and fell into a years-long pattern of day work for small amounts. Cleaning fish and selling them out of the trunk of his car. Installing or repairing air conditioners. "Usually, it was 10 dinar a day," he said. That’s about eight dollars.
     
He did get one break -- playing basketball for the Tripoli police team in a second-tier pro league. In one 40-game season he earned about $325 dollars a month, until he blew out a knee. Then it was back to day work.
     
"When I finished university, people told me, 'You have a good future, you'll do fine,'" he said wistfully. Instead he fell into a life of subsistence labor and an indolence he knew was dangerous. "Too many days you just wake up, hang around with friends, go back to sleep. You wake up and hang around some more."
Some of those friends were lost to alcohol. Even in Muslim Libya, where alcohol is officially banned, it's not hard to find bokha, the popular homemade moonshine. And some turned to heroin. Errabti pantomimed an injection. "Yes, it is here too."
     
I asked him if during that period he had lost hope. "I did not lose hope," he answered, "I believed Allah would give me everything I want and need." He looked away for a few seconds, thinking, looked back at me. "But, I lost time. A lot of time."

Despite slow progress, hope for future
In the big outdoor cafe on the edge of Tripoli's Algerian Square, groups of men spend the afternoons drinking coffee and smoking hubbly bubbly, a tobacco concoction cooled by water and inhaled through long flexible pipes. We joined three men at one table and each explained in his own way why the undercurrent of unease about the slow pace of progress doesn't translate to real worry.

"You must understand," said an older man named Abdel Zagozi, "that we are all just now speaking freely for the first time. And when we speak freely, we find we sometimes disagree! There is no problem with that, because that is freedom!"

He echoed Errabti's thoughts about the need to give the transition time, and that he continued to be happy beyond words simply to be able to tell his three children that their lives would be theirs to determine on their own.
     
The younger man at the table, Abdul Moshdi, agreed, adding that all Libyans, and not just those who end up as leaders, have to participate in the task of shaping the freedom now in their grasp. "The future is in our hands," he said. "It is our desire. We must all do something to make it a good future."
     
For Errabti, that means putting his career dreams back on the front burner.
     
He says he is looking for an opportunity "where I can use my education, my English language. Perhaps in media ... telling the story of what was accomplished here."
     
I asked if it would worry him if Gadhafi continued to elude capture, perhaps for months or years or even indefinitely, becoming a figure of mystery with newly mythic powers sufficient to drive a counter-insurgency.  

"I don't worry," he said, "because he will never come back to power, it is impossible now. And if someone who is in power does even one percent of what Gadhafi did, the people would reject him immediately."
     
He said again, "I don't worry."

Related link: Obama to Libyans: 'We will stand with you'

By Karl Bostic, NBC News

A bazaar in Libya's rebel capital of Benghazi might not appear to be the most obvious place to find a would-be Jay-Z.

But 18-year-old Boge and many others like him are pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression across the Middle East. The rappers have even been credited with helping to spark the so-called Arab Spring uprisings that deposed three long-serving dictators and rocked several other regimes.

Boge, who says he learned English from rap, is following in the footsteps of his hip-hop heroes KRS-One, Nas and Ice Cube.

"Our families are dying but yeah we're still tough, Gadhafi is trying to assassinate us," he rhymes during an impromptu performance amid vendors selling flags, shirts and hats in revolutionary colors at a market in the eastern Libyan city where the revolt against Moammar Gadhafi began.

Watch Boge perform in Benghazi, Libya 

Boge recalls how rap was treated as a criminal offense under Gadhafi's rule. Two of his friends were arrested by the once-feared secret police — who were quick to stamp out any signs of political dissent.

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"They used to put us in prison just for rapping," says Boge, who grew up on a diet of Western TV and American hip hop. "I rap to prove something to myself — and the world."

This phenomenon is not just confined to Libya. Rap music has inspired freedom fighters and pro-democracy protesters from Tunisia to Bahrain.

When 20-year-old Tunisian rapper Hamada Ben Amor — known as "El General" — attacked President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in a song he posted online late last year it captured the imagination of a population hooked on Facebook and fed-up with injustice. 

Entitled "Rais Lebled," the song chastised Tunisia's leader for not listening to his people who were "living like dogs" and forced to drink from a "cup of suffering." El General was subsequently arrested but his anthem helped to ignite the spark which eventually ended with thousands of people taking to the streets in January. Ben Ali later fled the country. 

At one recent concert in Monastir, the youthful crowd was filled with as much love for El General as they were for their country, repeatedly shouting "Vive Tunisie" (Long live Tunisia).

The same infectious brand of rap, revolution, and patriotism was evident in Cairo as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of office after decades of rule and also amongst Palestinians in the West Bank, who face different challenges in staging their own "thawra" — or revolution.

The significant factor is youth: 60 percent people in the Arab world are aged under 30. Rap popularized calls for reform and the Internet spread that message like wildfire.

Some of the leading names in movement include:

• Bahrain-based DJ Outlaw, who is best known for "Arab World Unite,"an anthem which is more about a spirit of togetherness than actual revolution.
• Deeb, who works as a financial analyst by day at a Cairo bank but toils away at music as he dreams of a better Egypt.
• Syrian-American Omar Offendum, who is considered one of the most eloquent Arab hip hop artists. He lives in Los Angeles.
• Dave Kirreh, an Arab who lives in East Jerusalem, who highlights not only problems with the Israelis but also infighting between Fatah and Hamas.
• "AJ", the godfather of hip hop in Yemen, was born in Ohio but took his love of funk and rap from the '70s and '80s to the conservative country four years ago.   
   

Watch Omar Offendum perform 'The Time is Now'

Back in Libya, Boge admits that he hopes rap will give him the opportunity to travel. Following the fall of Tripoli, he will have new songs to sing about a free Libya.

By Mike Taibbi, NBC News Correspondent

TRIPOLI, Libya – Three weeks after Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was driven out of Tripoli, effectively ending his 42-year reign, his would-be successor addressed a cheering crowd of thousands in what used to be called Green Square, the now renamed Martyrs’ Square.

"We seek a state of law and prosperity," said Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the interim head of the anti-Gadhafi forces’ National Transitional Council. The interim government has been recognized by scores of other countries as Libya's new governing authority. With fireworks crackling in the early evening (not gunfire), Jalil warned his own forces against acts of retribution aimed at the remaining Gadhafi loyalists.

"To anyone who harmed the Libyan people in any way," he intoned, “we need the courts... the judicial system... to decide." With that there were more fireworks, a crescendo of shouted acclamation.

Just off the square, a Ferris wheel glittered brightly among the other children’s rides in the city's now re-opened amusement park.  In the harbor that had been empty only days earlier, no fewer than 15 tankers were tied up and waiting for the signal to start taking on fresh shipments of oil and natural gas from two refineries lurching back into production. The shops and cafes in the city's retail sections have come back to life. Sanitation crews are on full schedule, cleaning the city and white-uniformed traffic control officers are back working patiently at the task of keeping the rivers of cars moving.  

Tripoli basically liberated itself on Aug. 21. There had only been a few brief, albeit bloody, skirmishes as rebel forces moved in – Gadhafi “loyalists” simply melting away as they had in many smaller cities and towns as the revolution made its way to the capitol. 

The city’s painters have been busy since then, too – the green of the Gadhafi Revolution of 1969 has already been replaced in thousands of places by the tri-color standard of the National Transitional Council.

And yet no one we've spoken to or heard from – including Abdul Jalil – has proclaimed a "declaration of liberation." The civil war isn’t over, and  won’t be over until one question on the minds of all Libyans is answered: “Where is Gadhafi?”

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On the hunt
A half mile from Martyrs’ Square where Jalil was speaking, a quiet man in a neat charcoal grey suit sighed at the question. "Psychologically," said Hisham Buhagiar, pausing at the word, "it is hard to believe that Libya is free.  I look over my shoulder when I call people on the phone, and wonder if the phone is tapped. We still talk in codes..."

A carpet salesman by trade, there are colorful rugs hanging on the walls of his modest office and sample swatches in the entranceway of the nondescript building, Buhagiar has spent almost his entire adulthood in a secret group fostering opposition to Gadhafi and planning his ouster. 

When the war started on Feb. 17 his group came out of the shadows and took up arms – they had trained for it over the years, Buhagiar said, in clandestine trips to weapons camps outside Libya. Buhagiar had been a soldier in four battles during the war earlier this year, suffering gunshot wounds to both legs along the way. Now he's no longer a soldier, but has a different task:  He's the man leading the hunt for Gadhafi himself. 

"He's always on the move, going back and forth and not in one place for long," Buhagiar said of his target.  "He's now under our surveillance. I think we are close enough to get him, perhaps in 10 days or so.  I really mean it."

But by "close enough," Buhagiar concedes it means an area of some 150 square miles in the southern Sahara around the town of Sabha, near the border of landlocked Niger. 

Buhagiar's team is made up of around 60 hunters – but there's no catchy name for the unit or for their mission, nothing like "Operation No More Moammar.” The team relies on both technology and “human assets,” people on the ground in the southern desert enclaves whose reported sightings of Gadhafi's large contingent match the chatter they've picked up through cellphone triangulation.

"But we don't have the technology to track satellite phone conversations," he said, saying carefully that "we have help with that" from other countries. From the U.S.? Great Britain? NATO countries? He nodded in general assent, but said nothing more on the subject.

"The guy has a lot of money, a lot of power," Buhagiar said of his nemesis. "He can hide. Libya is a big country, there's a vast desert with a lot of different tribes. Believe me, that's his neighborhood…That's where he grew up, it’s home for him. And he's been paying his people a lot of money."

By "his people," Buhagiar estimates a core traveling contingent of 300 to 500 people, including security forces and his remaining inner circle intimates. At times, Buhagiar reports, his team has received reports of groups that size on the move, pitching tents for a night, gone again the next day.

And what happens if and when his chase teams catch up to the group…and to Gadhafi himself?
       
"They will just catch him," he said. "We're not going there to kill him...We need to bring him to justice."  

Buhagiar said it would be "good for our ego...if we catch him ourselves," but that he'd have no qualms if Gadhafi escaped to another country which then handed him back to Libya for trial. What about Interpol's "Red Alert" placing Gadhafi at the top of its international "Most Wanted List" for prosecution by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity?

"The Libyan people will put him on trial," he says.  "Perhaps they will hang him."

Hoping the end is near
As civil wars go, this one was quick and surprisingly efficient. Barely six months from beginning to end, perhaps 30,000 killed on both sides, ragtag clusters of rebels armed at first with hunting rifles and the ardor of the oppressed morphing into an actual fighting force.

It helped immeasurably that tens of thousands of Gadhafi's loyalists – weary of his brutal and increasingly eccentric rule – simply laid down and cut and run in one town after another as the war progressed, leaving mercenaries to do much of the fighting. They left their weapons behind when they ran,  providing each class of better-trained rebels with increasing firepower of their own so that in the end it wasn't just an equal playing field, it was tilted toward the rebels' way.

And, of course, there was the U.N. resolution and subsequent NATO bombing campaign. Without it, Gadhafi’s Air Force and Navy – through whatever motivation – might have supplemented the Gadhafi ground forces and made the rebels' march to Tripoli impossible.

Buhagiar conceded that point. "I am a realist," he said, observing that despite years of planning, hoping and the authentic passions of the opposition, there would have been little chance of success, without the help of a real international coalition. “We had no organization, no weapons, no money; no nothing...We were just ordinary people saying ‘no’ to Gadhafi. He had the guns, the money, the power, the land."

Now things seem to be near the end, a couple of holdout towns are refusing to let the National Transitional Council fighters plant their flag, and Gadhafi is still on the run, in hiding. Buhagiar is certain he'll be caught, sooner rather than later.

"We'll put him through the courts. We'll see what his faith is...but we should hear from him. Hear why he was doing all this, why he killed all the people he killed."

And when that part of the story is done, when liberation is final and complete, what will Buhagiar do?
 
"I have a business to run..." 

Richard Engel, NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent, has been reporting from Libya on the fall of the Gadhafi regime over the last several months and has spent most of the last year covering the Arab Spring sweeping the Middle East.

Prior to that, he spent most of the last decade covering the U.S. War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan that came out the September 11th attacks.

Ahead of the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow have collaborated on a documentary about the aftermath of the terrorist attack and how it has changed life in the U.S., as well as our foreign policy.

The first hour of the documentary, "Day of Destruction, Decade of War," will premiere Thursday on MSNBC at 9 p.m.ET. The second two hours will air on Friday, Sept. 2 from 9-11p.m. ET. The full three hour documentary will air on Friday, Sept. 9.

During a lively Live Chat earlier today Richard answered reader questions about the significance of the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and the Arab Spring.

Click below to replay the chat. Please tune into MSNBC to see his documentary tonight and tomorrow.

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