Colonel Gaddafi may be amused by a legend that his father was none other than the French aviator after whom the air force base in Corsica was named.
A story reported since the 1970s suggests that he is the son of Albert Preziosi, a Corsican pilot who crashed in Libya in 1940. Preziosi was saved by a tribe and enjoyed an idyll with a young noblewoman, telling his commander that he had a child with her.
Photographs show a likeness between the young Colonel Gaddafi and Preziosi, who was killed on the Russian front in 1942 flying a Hurricane with the celebrated Normandy Nieman squadron.
Preziosi is said to have written a letter to the child, which was never found.
Mr Gaddafi’s paternity has long been a mystery.
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Colonel Gilles Villenave, commanding officer of the Albert Preziosi air base near Solenzara, chuckles when he thinks of the possible irony of his aircraft waging strikes from the Gaddafi family home. “Who knows? It may be true,” he said.