IMPRISONMENT, torture, crippling injury, death.

That was the reality of sport under Muammar Gaddafi, and the wounds and scars which the Libyan competitors carry at the Pan-Arab Games in Doha are as raw as the facts behind their team's presence here.

Just getting their 140-strong team to the start-line in Qatar marks a triumph of the human spirit. Corruption and nepotism were the least of the problems amid a sporting reign of terror.

Many competitors, and even the chief executive of their Olympic Committee, Nabil Elalem, were area commanders with the revolution's freedom fighters. For Elalem, this was the most fraught of duties. For his day job was ceo under the presidency of Mohammed Gaddafi, the dictator's first son. He was ostensibly trying to organise sport while, in reality, he was helping plot the regime's downfall.

Since liberation, he has replaced his former boss as NOC president, and is team leader in Qatar. He revealed that he had found his name on a death list, along with those of other sports officials, lawyers, and doctors in the offices of Mohammed Gaddafi: "His father wrote 'rat' against my name, because I was one of the rebels," he told me in an exclusive interview. "That's what he called the rebels: rats. I am proud to be called a rat.

"It was a list of people who needed to be 'eliminated', in their terms. It included me, the general secretary, Mr Maghur, and his family, the treasurer . . . at least 40 people. People in the central bank, people in telecommunications."

"We showed him who was the rat; they brought him from a tube, you know. The Libyan people brought Muammar Gaddafi out of a drain."

So Libya's liberated athletes made the most eloquent of statements when they marched into the Khalifa Stadium at the opening ceremony. Mohammed al Rabti led his colleagues, his flapping left sleeve testimony to his sacrifice. In 2007, he was doubles rowing silver medallist at the Arab Championships in Tunis. At the end of August, two days before his 23rd birthday, he lost an arm in fighting round Zuara airbase.

"Now it is a new beginning for Libya," said al Rabti, "and we need a lot of hard work together, to become one of the strongest Arab countries."

Elalem explains why al Rabti is here: "We brought him as our own motivator, a symbol for regeneration, but also of the revolution, and of our athletes' sacrifice for our country."

There were celebratory scenes when Mohammed Belgasem Tlish took silver in the under 58kg taekwondo final, even though he lost the title by a single point to Egyptian Tamer Bayoumi.

Elalem presented the medal and then told the harrowing story which explains the podium emotions. Tlish's brother, Ezedine, was also selected to compete here. He had twice been African champion and competed in the Athens and Beijing Olympics, but he was shot dead by regime forces while ferrying casualties into hospital.

"We told Mohammed before he went for the final that he needed to do something for his brother," said Elalem. "It was very emotional. We were preparing both, but especially Ezedine, for the London Olympics. He was killed at the hospital near Mitiga air base. He worked in anaesthesia, I think. There had been a fight and many injured people were brought to the hospital. He was carrying them in, trying to help, but got shot."

Though he was ceo under Mohammed Gaddafi, Elalem said: "The main pressure was coming from beyond him . . . the father, through him. He wants competitions, and I am in charge of the federation. How can I start asking people to organise competitions when our brothers are dying in the mountains, and Beyda, and Benghazi? Morally, it is very bad.

" 'We are against you. How come we can do these festivals and competitions, to show that you are strong?' It was like walking in a minefield . . . very dangerous."

Yet this was not Elalem's first brush with the regime. As a second-year engineering student in 1984, he was part of a student uprising against Gaddafi. "We formed a group, a revolutionary committee; we understood we had to do something.

"I spent one year in a prison cell, two by three metres. I was tortured during their investigation, of course."

His matter-of-fact tone, indicating that this was routine, made it all the more chilling.

"But Allah gave me support and I did not confess or give up any of my friends. I was the last to be caught. There were beatings, of course – felga we call it – a very famous torture. They put you upside down and hit you across the legs with a steel bar." He gestures to the back of his legs and thighs. "They used electricity as well on me, of course, here, here, and here," gesticulating to his mouth, hands and chest.

Afterwards, he spent nine years in Malaysia, returning in 2002 to lecture in engineering at Tripoli University.

But of the mid-1980s, he said: "We were trying to do something for our country. We knew if you went free you had to pay a very high price. Our sportsmen have also paid a high price. We lost one from rugby, one from volleyball; we lost a few. It was an uprising for the whole Libyan people and, as you know, the athletes are normally in front. Most of the Libyan delegation were involved in fighting, even the officials. The judo players were fighting in the western mountains and in Misrata. Most of the junior team participated in the fighting. Several were field commanders. I was a field commander in my area.

"They were smuggling arms, medication, money, through Libya by different roads. We sent money through the gold markets. But if the regime know you are doing that . . . that's it. It was very dangerous. But either we should live our lives with dignity, or else we should die.

"Mohammed [Gaddafi] . . . ? To be frank, compared to his brothers, he is peaceful. I told him I had been a political prisoner for a year.

"Some people had told him I didn't like his father's regime. He said to me, as a friend: 'What's your position?' I told him: 'I keep my political position for myself.' He understood."

Colonel Gaddafi did not like promoting sportsmen, lest they divert attention from him. Footballers were referred to on television only by their number. All, that is, save his third son, Al-Saadi, one-time captain of the national football team, captain of his club in Tripoli, and president of the Libyan Football Federation.

Al-Saadi was once trained by the infamous Olympic drug cheat, Ben Johnson, so it was hardly a surprise when he failed a drug test himself.

"Recently, it has been very difficult to prepare our team," said Elalem. "Liberation finished just one to two months ago. The stadiums and training areas are not in proper shape. There is no infrastructure. In football, for example, the stadiums have to be fixed, in Tripoli, all over. Because of the war, in some places there are no stadiums at all, like in Misrata. The infrastructure of sport has been hit by shells, or whatever.

"We are still establishing the interim government. There are weapons everywhere. The country really is safe, but for sports, when we talk about a number of people gathering in one place, from the safety side, it's not recommended to bring all those people together.

"Athletes fighting for liberation did not have enough time to practice. It is very difficult to get your head round fighting, then trying to train.

"In the 2007 Pan Arab Games [in Cairo] we had good results. You should keep the momentum, of course, and our target was better results. After eight months' war, we are lucky to bring all those people together.

"But we are very optimistic for the future. We are giving priority to the social and humanitarian side of sport. We decided sport should play an important part of rehabilitation and forgiveness, bring people together. If we give some aid, the athletes and stars visit injured people, children. When we send medical aid to any area in Libya, we also send athletes."

In truth, Tlish's triumph, with supreme motivation in his brother's memory, glorious as it was, was one of few exceptions in Doha. Thus far, Libya are 16th of 18 on the medal table, with two silver and five bronze.

The football team could not raise its game, and athletes were training under indiscriminate Nato attacks.

There were emotional scenes for the restoration of the pre-Gaddafi red, black, and green colours, replacing the dictatator's standard, but they went down to a surprise 1-0 defeat by Sudan in Doha. "We managed to send the team for just two or three weeks' preparation, which is not enough," said Elalem.

Libya has never won an Olympic medal, and next year is their Olympic committee's 50th anniversary. "We had hoped to get our first medal in London, but that is going to be more difficult now," he says. "We are not prepared yet, with lack of full support from the regime."

However, he is confident the National Transitional Council will pay more attention to sport, especially with the unfreezing of his country's assets last week. "The regime left nothing behind, only bad ideas . . . Our image overseas was bad under Gaddafi; people overseas think Libyans are troublemakers, so it was about our dignity; we are not bad people. Now we need to start rebuilding our nation, restore law and order, but everyone who opposed our revolution, supported Gaddafi, stole public money . . . I am not saying we will kill them – they are also our brothers – but they need to go for rehabilitation. Sportsmen know the value of team work and togetherness. When they work for companies they take these values with them, and thus they will be the key people in rebuilding our nation."