TWO OF Muammar Gadafy’s grandchildren studied at a school in the Libyan capital which has offered the Irish syllabus and exam system since the mid-1990s.
Mohammed and Safia Gadafy, whose father Saadi is Col Gadafy’s third son, were students at the International School of the Martyrs before the family fled Tripoli after the city fell to rebel forces last month.
Saadi Gadafy is now under house arrest in neighbouring Niger, but the whereabouts of his family are unknown.
The children, who registered at the school several years ago, attended classes there until the semester ended in mid-June, according to acting principal Muftah Messei.
The ISM is the only school outside Ireland to offer the Junior and Leaving Cert syllabus and exams.
Saadi Gadafy visited the ISM, which is located in the affluent suburb of Hai Andalus, only on one occasion. His wife usually dealt with the school authorities.
“The children’s mother always stressed that they be treated in a normal way, just like everybody else,” Mr Messei told The Irish Times. “Their teachers described them as good students, especially the girl.”
The children’s bodyguards would sit outside the unmarked entrance of the school, which is ringed by high walls. The red, black and green pre-Gadafy flag, adopted by the revolutionaries, now flutters above the gate and adorns a nearby wall.
Inside the sprawling school complex, a sculpture once rendered in Gadafy’s beloved green is now painted in the colours of Libya’s old standard. A plaque on top remains inscribed with an aphorism from Gadafy’s Green Book: “Knowledge is a natural right of every human being.”
In addition to Irish textbooks, the school bookshop contains works by Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, John McGahern, and Maeve Binchy.
Schools across Libya reopened earlier this week, but the ISM remains closed because many of its expatriate staff, who fled when Libya’s uprising began in mid-February, have not yet returned. Some 13 of the school’s teachers are Irish. “We would like to send them a message that it is safe to come back,” said Mr Messei. “We are in dire need of them.”
The co-educational school caters for more than 500 students. It was established in the late 1950s to provide an education to expatriate children whose parents worked in the oil sector and the diplomatic community. In 1995, the school’s then principal, Brendan Coffey, from Waterford, introduced the Irish exam system as a more suitable alternative to the International Baccalaureate.