Plastic surgeon says he operated on Qadhafi

Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi.

SAO PAULO: It was well past midnight when the Brazilian surgeon says he was escorted deep inside a bunker in the Libyan capital. His assignment — to shave years off Muammar Qadhafi's appearance by removing fat from his belly and injecting it into his wrinkled face. The Libyan leader also got hair plugs.

“He told me that he had been in power for 25 years at that time, and that he did not want the young people of his nation to see him as an old man,” Dr. Liacyr Ribeiro recalled. “I recommended a facelift, but he refused.”

The secretive four-hour procedure in 1995 was done, at Mr. Qadhafi's insistence, with local anaesthesia because he wanted to remain alert. Midway through, the Libyan leader stopped to have a hamburger. Mr. Qadhafi was worried a facelift would be too noticeable, so he opted for the less radical procedure, the plastic surgeon told The Associated Press. “I warned Qadhafi that the effects of the operation I performed would last for about five years, that it had an expiration date after which the skin would sag and the wrinkles 

would reappear,” said Dr. Ribeiro.

“He said he would call me if he needed me to come back,” and about five years ago there was such a request, but Dr. Ribeiro had a family obligation.

“They never called me again,” he said.

At the time of the surgery, Mr. Qadhafi was 53, but Dr. Ribeiro said he looked at least 10 years older. A photo taken at the time shows the smiling doctor posing next to the Libyan leader, who wore a white suit, floral shirt and had pronounced wrinkles crisscrossing his face and neck.

After the procedure, “he looked like a 45-year-old man.” He insists he is speaking out now only to provide insight into a man, and certainly not to boast.

“Qadhafi is not looking very good these days,” said Dr. Ribeiro, noting that the 68-year-old leader has appeared jowly in recent appearances, his skin puffy, loose and deeply creased. “To let potential patients know that I operated on him would be counterproductive.”

Berlusconi

Mr. Qadhafi is hardly the only world leader to go under the knife.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi owes his look to plastic surgery and a hair transplant work also performed by Dr. Ribeiro, according to media reports, though the doctor refuses to confirm that. And rumours swirled about Russian leader Vladimir Putin after he appeared last October with heavy makeup covering bruises under his eyes.

“He was an extremely polite, intelligent, cordial and soft-spoken person who quickly told me what he wanted and why,” Dr. Ribeiro said.

Mr. Qadhafi's bunker “had two fully equipped and very modern operating rooms, a gym and a swimming pool,” Dr. Ribeiro said. Dr. Ribeiro said after the surgery he was given an envelope “full of U.S. dollars and Swiss francs”. He would not say how much money it contained.

“All I can say is that it was more than I would charge for my services in Brazil,” he said.

Dr. Ribeiro said he assumes Mr. Qadhafi turned to him because Libyan surgeons were either “incapable of doing what I did or too scared that he would die on the operating table.”