They experienced difficulties

The British, who I’m given to understand used to run an entire empire, sent what Foreign Secretary William Hague calls “a small British diplomatic team” to Benghazi by helicopter, equipped, as all diplomatic teams are, with guns, explosives, and false passports. Given that no one was expecting armed SAS soldiers to drop from the sky, the anti-Qaddafi rebels they were supposed to be making contact with immediately took them prisoner (Hague: “They experienced difficulties”), and subsequently expelled from the country (“which have now been satisfactorily resolved”).

Meanwhile, a former aide of Qaddafi claims that the reason Qaddafi was elected head of the African Union in 2009 was that Silvio Berlusconi got the leader of an unnamed nation who was opposing him to change his vote by sending two prostitutes to... convince him.