Transnational Repression 77 The threats posed by the regime meant that few Libyans felt safe enough to be open in their opposition, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s when murders in Britain were more common. Those who did so were few in number, and they expected retribution for their troubles. Khaled, a second-generation exile whose father was a wanted man, recalled that the fear of being kidnapped or harmed by Gaddafi’s men was “really at the forefront of our lives.” His father used an alias abroad, and he and his siblings were instructed never to use their dad’s real name in public. “There was no way around it for us,” Khaled explained, describing how the children of the opposition had to live day to day with the assumption that Gaddafi’s men could be waiting around the corner. Libyan American Ahmed echoed this experience, recalling that “If a Libyan just showed up out of the blue without an introduction from some trusted person, it was always viewed with suspicion.” Out of fear of proxy punishment, dissidents like Nagi, who lived for many years in Britain, “kept everything incognito. When we did these demonstrations, we had these masks on. We didn’t show our faces. The problem we had is not for ourselves, but for our families who were [in Libya] – because those are the tactics.” NFSL activists and their descendants additionally attested that the possibility of lethal retribution also affected where they settled. Heba, who was raised by exiles, reiterated just how fearful their family was of strange Libyans: We lived in Michigan for a short time, and I remember my parents packing up one time in the middle of the night because an “antenna” had moved in next door. Antennas – that’s what we called a Libyan spy. Literally in the middle of the night, we got picked up and stayed with some friends for a few days until we found a different place to live. Problems like these motivated some NFSL dissidents to move together to the same neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky; besides an affordable cost of living, there was safety in numbers. By residing together “in the middle of nowhere, [with] just white people,” according to Khaled, the community could more easily identify threats and warn each other about the presence of strangers, should they come knocking. Activist Dr. Mohamed Abdul Malek, founder of Libya Watch, likewise reported that every morning he would ask his children to wait inside while he checked the underside of his car for bombs. He said, “I think that was being overcautious, but it is something that anyone, any Libyan, would expect from Gaddafi.”2 Libyans and Syrians who were not part of dissident families reported experiencing the same anxieties. Nebal, a Syrian studying in London, explained that “the regime made us fear each other because you don’t know who works for 2 Mohamed was not alone in being concerned about car bombings. Writer Hisham Matar (2016: 6–7) describes that his father would do the same: “Before getting into the car, he would ask us to stand well away. He would go down on his knees and look under the chassis, cup in his hands and peek through the windows for any sign of wiring. Men like him had been shot in train stations and cafes, their cars blown up.” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press