A Libyan writer who spoke freely and can never go home. Told by Ghazi Gheblawi (EP 5).
Ahmed al-Bukhari (الكاتب أحمد البخاري) was a Libyan writer who wrote freely and spoke his mind — before and after the 2011 revolution.
After 2011, militias targeted al-Bukhari. The details of the threat were not fully elaborated on the show, but the outcome was clear: he was forced to leave Libya. He cannot return. He fears for his life.
Gheblawi told this story in the context of what it costs to exercise freedom of speech as a Libyan intellectual. The revolution was supposed to bring freedom. For writers like al-Bukhari, it brought a different kind of silencing — not by a single dictator but by armed groups with no accountability.
The story sits alongside The Weaponised Article as evidence that honest expression in post-revolutionary Libya carries real physical danger. The regime changed. The risk did not.
Gheblawi, himself a writer and publisher in London, lives in this tension. He can write freely because he is abroad. Al-Bukhari can write freely because he was forced abroad. The writers who stayed have to calculate every sentence.
See: Libyan Media and Propaganda