Kais al-Hilali
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Kais al-Hilali | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1979 (age 46–47) Libya |
| Died | 2011 |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Known for | political cartoonist |
Kais al-Hilali (1979 – 20 March 2011) was a Libyan political cartoonist shot and killed on 20 March 2011 during the Libyan Civil War minutes after painting one of the political street murals for which he was locally famous. According to witnesses, he had just drawn a caricature of Muammar Gaddafi on a wall in Benghazi when the bullet hit.[1]
When the uprising began, al-Hilali and his friends started drawing caricatures on paper and distributing them around the city for people to show at demonstrations or hang on walls.[2]
Kais was among demonstrators who stormed the city's Khattiba barracks on 20 February, but his contribution was different from that of those armed with rocks and petrol bombs. Instead of fighting, he painted a large cartoon across the Khattiba walls depicting Colonel Gaddafi beside the rebels' two-fingered victory salute.[2] In other wall murals he drew images of Gaddafi accompanied by the mocking comic wording, 'The monkey of all monkeys in Africa'.[2] In a video for TF1, a national French channel, Hilali says, in Arabic, "Gaddafi calls himself the King of Kings of Africa; I say he's the Monkey of Monkeys of Africa."
Death
He was reportedly gunned down by secret police when a car he was a passenger in stopped at a checkpoint. The group of artists that now paint the artistic murals in Benghazi, goes by his name and continues to work from a ramshackle office in a makeshift media centre next to the city court.[2]
He received a message to stop the artists' group claim. It claims the death threat was delivered by Gaddafi's security agents before they were chased out of the eastern part of city.