Libya's original freedom fighter vows to carry on battle for peace

For three decades, Hassan al-Amin was one of Libya's foremost dissidents. He organised and agitated against the Gaddafi regime from a tiny office in a converted bedroom in his house in south London. When the Arab spring swept the country, he returned to a rapturous welcome, being elected last year to the new congress and appointed head of its human rights committee. But today he is an exile again, chased from Libya by some of the same militias he once hailed as heroes.

Amin's story of triumph and banishment is also the story of Libya's slide from post-revolutionary triumph to a land ruled by the gun. "I returned to Libya with tears in my eyes. I was so hopeful," he says now. "But our revolution has been hijacked."

I first met him one baking hot day at the tail end of that revolution, when he came to address hundreds of wives, mothers and sisters of Misrata's slain militiamen in a mosque at Zarouk, one of the city's battered southern suburbs. Rockets were still landing in the city, but the reception was thunderous as he outlined the bright future for a country free of dictatorship and able to enjoy the riches of Africa's largest oil reserves. "I had a lot of hope then; I thought everybody was going to live up to the responsibility." However the guns never fell properly silent in Libya. Militia violence is Libya's curse, exploding last September with the murder of America's ambassador, Chris Stevens, when jihadist gunmen stormed the US consulate in Benghazi.

This month, the violence finally caught up with Amin. He had already clashed with some militia leaders in Misrata when he visited jails, demanding that prisoners be released to government care. Then, on 5 March, parliament met to debate Libya's most contentious issue, the planned purge of Gaddafi-era officials from public office.

After days of protests, congress moved to Libya's meteorological office, hoping the out-of-town location would spare it violence. Instead, armed protesters ringed the building, police melted away and gunmen broke in and held MPs hostage for 12 hours. Some female members barricaded themselves in an office; others ran for their lives. Trying to escape, speaker Mohammed Magariaf's jeep was hit by a fusillade of machine-gun fire.

Amin was on his way to congress when an MP phoned him to warn him of the chaos. He diverted to Tripoli's television station, making a live broadcast urging the people to save their congress. The decision made him a lightning rod not just for protest, but for the anger of rogue militias. Death threats followed, so he resigned from congress, the first MP to do so, fleeing back to Britain.

I met him last week back in the small room in his home, its location kept secret at his request, and from where he did so much to galvanise support for the revolution. His website, Libya Al Mostakbal, Libya The Future, is humming again, this time with demands that the militias respect congress. The bookshelves are crammed with law books in English and Arabic, the ashtray is full, and his lean frame is hunched over a computer as messages of support come in from Libya and abroad. "I never thought this would happen. The country is now full of militarised groups; some of them are out of control. Thousands of prisoners are in jail – they are not charged with anything. I was the chairman of the human rights committee and I couldn't do anything."

Life as an exile is a familiar role: Amin, 53, fled Gaddafi's Libya in 1983, after being caught up in a purge of his university. He was beaten and tortured, then freed with orders to spy on fellow academics. Instead, he escaped to London. He arrived on 4 July to find the city bedecked in the Stars and Stripes. "I thought I had arrived in the wrong place, everywhere was the American flag," he remembers. "Then someone said it was the American independence day, and I thought 'Bloody hell, this is my independence day'."

Amin settled in London, marrying a fellow Misratan and starting a family of three children, and after getting a master's degree in comparative education at London University he began a teaching career at a Surrey school.

Meanwhile, he became a leading activist: each Saturday he would hold vigil with a small band of fellow exiles in Trafalgar Square, handing out leaflets against Gaddafi. "Sometimes just me and my son were there, in the rain, in the snow. It was important to be there."

A year after arriving in Britain, Libyans protested outside the London embassy, to be met by a burst of machine gun fire that killed WPC Yvonne Fletcher. Amin missed it because his own group had decided that as the protest was organised by rival dissidents, its members should stay away. "After that I decided: no groups, I would protest as an individual," he says.

When Gaddafi's son Saif Al Islam was invited to speak at the London School of Economics in 2009, after he arranged a controversial payment of £1.5m, Amin and a handful of activists turned up to demonstrate, to be attacked by pro-Gaddafi thugs on the university steps. "I never ever lost hope. I always knew Gaddafi would go. What I did not expect was for it to happen in this manner, for the people to do it in this big way."

The ubiquity of a revolution that was fought by more than 500 militias has proved latterly to be its weakness. While many militias have evolved into quasi-police forces, others have turned to gangsterism, with a weak government in no position to confront them. The result is a fragmented country and economic stagnation; foreign investors have been frightened off and Libya's leaders are too divided to tackle the chaos left by Gaddafi's four decades of erratic brutal rule.

In February, hamstrung by protests, congress abandoned the so-called Road Map, a constitutional declaration devised two years ago that gave it the job of supervising Libya's constitution. A new body is to be elected to do the job, but with arguments raging over the place of Sharia law in that constitution, and with regional leaders squabbling for influence, there is no sign of when those elections will happen. "We need a new road map, " says Amin. "Congress is the highest legal body in the country: if this legislature is finished, the whole country is finished."

For the moment, he is back to a familiar role, and says he is grateful for the sanctuary. "Britain is my second home. This country educated me, my children were born here, it sheltered me when I was in danger. You know, the ordinary people in Libya want peace and stability. "It is up to us, the people, to confront the militias."