THEY slaughtered a camel for the hero's return. Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah flew into Tripoli yesterday after his long absence from Libya into the embrace of Colonel Gaddafi.

His leader wanted to celebrate. Who knows what Fhimah wanted to do?

On Wednesday he was freed from two years' incarceration at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Yesterday he was in Gaddafi's dusty compound in Tripoli a free man, or at least a freer man.

The camel's throat was cut, right in front of me, the Libyan leader and Fhimah. It wasn't exactly a cockfighting derby, where at least you understand the protocols involved. It was a simple execution. A big knife and a lot of blood. It kicked a bit.

The blood from a camel is quite astounding: it keeps flowing. It ran under Colonel Gaddafi's soles. His burly guards pushed us away from the dead beast, while the leader kept on smiling.

The photographer standing next to me swore that camels tasted fine. She'd had a piece of one the previous night, in the Grand Hotel, Tripoli, where we are staying. It probably didn't feel anything, she added. Somehow I doubt it.

So this is the way Colonel Gaddafi celebrates the freedom of one of his loyal subjects. No cholesterol dinners and buttered rolls, just a freshly slaughtered camel. A concerned official took me aside and said it would go to Fhimah's family. There was another one in a truck that would go to the guards.

The camel died in the compound where, in 1986, the Americans bombed a building killing 37 Libyan people. Gaddafi decided to preserve it in its exploded entirety, so now it hangs there, broken, battered, bloodied, an ersatz shrine to Middle Eastern conflict.

Colonel Gaddafi is a curious individual to meet in the flesh. Tall, confident, bullish and smiling, his face looks like it has been embalmed. With a phalanx of bodyguards around him, however, and the freed Fhimah, you only get as close as 100 or so angry Gaddafi supporters will allow.

It's part of their custom, I suppose, to offer an introduction to Gaddafi without actually being allowed to ask anything. At least not anything that he is prepared to answer. Will you pay compensation to the families of the victims of Lockerbie, I shouted to him. He smiled, looked me straight in the eye, and said: ''Who will pay for this?'' He turned to the decrepit building. ''Who will pay for this?'' He then concluded his opinion with the tongue-in-cheek observation. ''Shall Libya pay? No, no, America will pay.''

The tenor of his voice spelt defiance and the crowd screamed louder. Americans can go to ''Jahannam'', is what he seemed to be saying. Which basically means they can go to hell. Yet, despite his anger, he presented a very different picture from the flamboyant figure I had come to expect. He looked tired and only vaguely threatening.

Fhimah, the innocent hero, clung to his leader. Fresh from two years outside his homeland on remand and then on trial, he looked sprightly, and somewhat stunned by the attention. Yet I couldn't help but feel that his seeming disinclination to smile masked a deeper knowledge of what lies in store for him. At one point he looked at his watch, imagining, I suppose, himself somewhere else away from Gaddafi, perhaps even Libya.

Eyes full of glee and horror, Fhimah's mind was lucid enough to understand what a monumental jam he is in. Libyan hero and, well, Libyan hero. Has he got much of a choice?

Earlier at the airport, when he arrived to meet his family, he must have blanched at the reporters flipping open and closing their notebooks. CNN, BBC, Reuters, ITN, all the main news channels and a handful of European and American newspapers, all desperate for a look at the man who had been accused and found not guilty of bombing and killing 270 people at Lockerbie.

He looked at his watch at Maatika airport, Tripoli, the same way as he did at the camel slaughter. I wondered what he was making of all of this. As he first set foot on Libyan soil, he shook his fist in triumph and cried ''Allahu akbar'' (God is great). ''Justice has triumphed! Down with America!'' shouted the crowd of 100 relatives and friends who had gathered to welcome him home.

Fhimah disappeared briefly into a closed room at the airport to greet his relatives. His daughter, Zahra, was among them. ''I am happy to be with papa.''

The screaming had barely died down when he re-appeared and was bundled into a white Nissan. He raised his arms in defiance. Libyan government officials tried their best to chase the press pack away from his car. They failed.

Instead they invited us to a hastily choreographed propaganda meeting with the leader. The roads were suitably choreographed as well and I could see hundreds of Tripoli residents appearing along the way on the pavements waving banners, sheets and just about anything at Fhimah.

When we arrived at the compound, a Toyota pulled up in front of us, with the large camel in the back. A celebration was taking place. Everyone knew where the blood was coming from, except for the camel.

Gaddafi, clutching the hero's arm, said Al Megrahi, the Libyan sentenced to a minimum 20 years for the Lockerbie murders, was ''just as innocent as Fhimah''. He would prove it on Monday when he would reveal the evidence. Then the Lockerbie judges would have three choices, said Gaddafi, ''either to commit suicide or to resign or to admit the truth''. He smiled. There was blood on his feet. Is there on his hands?