The Last Sighting Of Muammar Gaddafi?

When Abdusalam Ataher-Ali was brought into the small office of the anti-Gaddafi military base in Tarhuna, he looked both terrified and confused.

Even an affectionate hug and a ruffling of hair from the commander in charge of his care failed to ease his obvious fright.

Two days after being captured by anti-Gaddafi troops, this 17-year-old former bodyguard of Khamis Gaddafi was being put forward for an interview with Sky News.

We were the first Westerners he had ever met.

For months he had been exposed to the regime's propaganda about the "imperialist invasion" of Libya.

He was only just getting to grips with the reality that his captors and those he had been fighting against were in fact Libyans, not al Qaeda and Egyptians, as he had so regularly been told.

It is hardly surprising it took him a moment to accept that the four white men in body armour who wanted to speak to him were not soldiers or aggressors but journalists.

Sky's chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay did his best to reassure him we were not there to do anything more than ask him some questions about Khamis.

Little did we know that his testimony would be one of the most significant accounts yet in the hunt for Khamis' father, Muammar Gaddafi.

Abdusalam comes from the southern desert city of Sabha.

He described how he joined the Libyan army as a volunteer just over a month ago, when recruiters came to the city urging young men to join the fight to defend Libya against the "armed gangs and imperialist invaders".

After joining he was taken up to Tripoli, where he became one of the coterie of bodyguards around Khamis - the commander of Libya's most elite army section, the 32nd Brigade.

It is not the first report of the immediate protection teams of Col Gaddafi's sons being made up of teenagers.

It has also been suggested that Mutassim Gaddafi, the head of Libya's intelligence service, also surrounded himself with 16-year-old boys because they were seen as less likely to defect.

It was around 1.30pm last Friday that Abdusalam saw Colonel Gaddafi at the Khamis brigade base in the Saladin district of Tripoli.

At exactly that time our team were following a section of anti-Gaddafi technical vehicles as they engaged in a heavy firefight less than a kilometre from the base.

Although the incoming fire was intense, with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine gun rounds coming in from several directions, we had no idea how close we were to the man himself.

Inside the base, Abdusalam watched Colonel Gaddafi pull up in a Hyundai sedan car, normally used as a taxi.

Khamis welcomed his father and the pair had a meeting for around 15 minutes.

Although he was too far away to hear what was being said in the conversation, he claimed Colonel Gaddafi looked "as he always did", not visibly anxious or dressed differently.

After that he claims Col Gaddafi got into one of a convoy of 25 vehicles, along with his daughter Aisha.

The fact she, her mother and two of her brothers are now known to be in Algeria, will raise serious questions about whether Col Gaddafi himself may have also crossed the border.

As he saw the convoy of vehicles carrying the colonel prepare to depart, Abdusalam asked his senior officer where they were going.

He was told they were going to Sabha.

Given that it was his hometown, and that he was becoming increasingly concerned by the rapidly depleting number of soldiers around him, he asked whether they too should be going along with the convoy?

The answer he got was no. They would be travelling in a separate convoy with Khamis, heading for Bani Walid.

As they prepared to leave, Abdusalam describes how Khamis switched vehicles from his normal Mercedes into an armoured Land Cruiser.

He knew this, because he was the last person to shut the door on his boss.

As they left, Abdusalam took up his position as outrider for Khamis.

He manned the Doushka cannon on the vehicle in front, shooting at anything that moved, clearing the way for the rest.

Around 60km southeast of the base, the convoy was struck by a Nato airstrike.

The remains of at least two trucks and five cars can still be seen on the main road just before the town of Tarhuna.

One of the vehicles destroyed by those airstrikes was the armoured Land Cruiser, which Abdusalam insists was carrying Khamis.

As local anti-Gaddafi troops attacked the remaining vehicles, Abdusalam was a captured.

When we asked whether there was any chance Khamis may have survived the attack, Abdusalam shook his head and said 'no', he was sure he was dead.

There was no hiding the look in his eye as he said this. There were no games going on. This was his honest assessment.

Those in command of the anti-Gaddafi base in Tarhuna insist that Abdusalam is not a prisoner.

He is being well looked after, and does not look either malnourished or injured.

They say he is 17, just a child who had volunteered to fight to defend his country. That he was lied to and misled is not his fault.

In the coming weeks they hope that Abdusalam will be able to be returned to his family in Sabha and put the past behind him.

After the inteview, the commander came over to the sofa on which Abdusalam was sitting.

He gave him another reassuring hug, another ruffle of his hair. And this time, there was just the slightest hint of a smile from Abdusalam.

For this boy at least, the horror of war is over.