Hala Misrati once wrote romance tales about lost love. Now she's the ferocious face of Libya's regime, a star talk-show host on state TV lashing out daily against Moammar Gadhafi's enemies.
She railed against a Libyan woman who claimed to Western journalists she had been raped by Gadhafi militiamen, calling her a "liar" and suggesting she was a "whore." On live TV, Misrati grilled an arrested journalist for an hour with all the doggedness of a secret police interrogator.
"Say the things that you said in your recordings!" she barked at the journalist, Rana al-Aqbani, apparently referring to taped recordings of al-Aqbani's phone calls, as she tried to make her acknowledge that she sought Gadhafi's ouster. Al-Aqbani, a Tripoli-based journalist, has since disappeared.
With her attack-dog demeanor, Misrati stands out even in the field of presenters of state-run news channels throughout Arab countries, whose autopilot response has been to denounce protesters in the anti-government uprisings around the Middle East.
"She's clearly a very strong mouthpiece for the pro-Gadhafi forces," said Dina Eltahawy, a researcher for Amnesty International, which has issued an urgent alert to try find al-Aqbani.
Misrati appears daily on her hour-long call-in show, "Libya on This Day" on the state-run satellite channel, Al-Jamahiriya 2.
In her 30s, with long dark hair, heavy makeup and often decked out in gaudy outfits, she often gives long monologues crusading against Libya's rebels, the NATO-led alliance bombing Gadhafi troops from the air and anyone perceived of sympathizing with them or fueling the campaign against Gadhafi. That includes Western media and, particularly, the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera, which she refers to as "the pig channel" in a rhyming play on words – the Arabic word for pig is "khanzeera."
Libya's crisis has made her a star – beloved by Gadhafi supporters and viewed with a mix of loathing and bemused fascination by the opposition.