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Outlook: The Boxer who Defied Gaddafi

Magazines & Reviews

Mahmoud Abushgewa

22/09/2015 GMT

The Boxer who Defied Gaddafi

BBC World Service - Outlook, The Boxer who Defied Gaddafi

The champion boxer from Libya whose career was halted when Gaddafi banned the sport.

Mahmoud Abushgewa was a champion boxer, whose career was ended when Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi banned the sport in the 1970s. Now he's coaching new talent in Tripoli.

The Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi banned boxing in the 1970s, calling the sport 'savage'. Overnight, boxing gyms were shut down across the country. At the time Mahmoud Abushgewa from Tripoli was the African champion and had just qualified for the world championships in North Carolina. But the ban ended his career at a stroke. Years later, after the fall of Gaddafi, Mahmoud and some of his former boxing colleagues opened a  gym to train new talent. 

The award-winning writer Evie Wyld is obsessed with sharks. She's fascinated by everything about them - their teeth, their skin, their hunters and even their victims. Evie was born in London and still lives there, but she spent much of her childhood in Australia. Now she's teamed up with illustrator Joe Sumner to produce a graphic memoir of her childhood called 'Everything Is Teeth'. 

When Canadian student Alexandra La Montagne travelled to South Africa to volunteer on a wildlife project she thought she would be looking after monkeys. But she ended up on a mission to save a lion's life. She's now made a film about her experiences called 'Saving Serabie'. 

Alexandr Romanovsky - known to his friends as Sasha - thought he had his life worked out. He was living in St Petersburg in Russia, working at the university and in a relationship with a girl he loved. But then, his girlfriend broke up with him - and his future fell apart. So when he saw an advert for a job as a tourist guide at the world's second most northerly town he applied. For the past three years he's been one of only six people living in the former Russian mining town of Pyramiden.

(Picture: Mahmoud Abushgewa wearing some of the boxing medals he won in the 1970's. Credit: Tom Westcott)

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