Young Gadaffi starts war with Europe

The arrest of the Libyan leader's son Hannibal Gadaffi (pictured) in Switzerland – he was held in jail for two days following a fracas at a hotel with domestic staff – has sparked a major international incident, with Libya banishing Swiss firms like Nestle and halting oil imports into the country. However, his behaviour will come as no surprise to the police forces of Europe.

Thirty-year-old Hannibal, one of Colonel Gadaffi’s seven sons, has a hard-won reputation as a hell-raiser and playboy. He has repeatedly invoked diplomatic immunity when in trouble, ever since his first clash with European authority in 2001. Returning to the Hilton Hotel in Rome at 3am, he tussled with Italian police guarding his room, attacking them with bottles, emptying a fire extinguisher over them and putting three in hospital.

A few years later, while a business studies student in Copenhagen, he was chased by police when he drove his Porsche at 90mph through red lights on the Champs-Elysee in Paris, at one point going the wrong way. After police pulled him over they were confronted by his six bodyguards and a fight broke out in which an officer was injured. On each occasion he evaded prosecution by claiming diplomatic immunity. (Continued below)

But that trump card hasn’t always worked. In 2004, he was arrested in Paris after allegedly beating up a female companion who had resisted his advances, and damaging the door to her hotel room. Later he changed rooms and was said to have begun destroying furniture before pulling a 9mm Walter PKK semi-automatic handgun on security guards. This time France lodged an official complaint with the Libyan authorities and three months later he was convicted in absentia of "voluntary violence against a vulnerable person, namely his pregnant companion, which caused her total inability to work for at least eight days". He was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and a €500 fine.