Hisham Ben Ghalbon

He was a keen horse rider and owner and was an active member in the Benghazi Riding Club since its 1969 foundation, where he won several trophies in local and national show jumping competitions.

He took a leading role in student protests against Gaddafi in Britain, including editing and publishing the union's journal “April Martyrs”, and organizing the first demonstration in front of the Libyan Embassy in London on 11 June 1980 in defiance of the wave of assassinations carried out by the regime's notorious “death squads.” These “squads” were dispatched from Libya to execute Gaddafi's command to “physically liquidate” his opponents abroad whom he publicly labelled “stray dogs” in his televised speeches.

The LCU raised the Libyan flag of independence (the tricolour) which Gaddafi banned as soon as he usurped power through a coup d'état on 1 September 1969 and called upon fellow Libyan opposition groups in exile to fly the national flag and take the 1951 Libyan Constitution as a source of legitimacy to confront Gaddafi's illegitimate regime until the regime is toppled and the people were able to "decide such form of body politic and system of government as they may choose of their own free will in a referendum to be conducted under international supervision within a reasonable period following the restoration of constitutional legality to the nation".

Since the beginning of May 2010 Ben Ghalbon co-organised the weekly vigils held in Manchester by political activists from the north of England in solidarity with the families of the victims of the Abu Salim prison massacre in which more than 1260 civilian detainees were murdered on 29 June 1996 in Tripoli, and to support their families demands for a fair inquest and to bring the perpetrators of that crime to justice.

Libyan residents in Manchester gathered in the city's Albert Square to express their solidarity with the demonstrators in Libya and be "the echo of their voice".

He also played an active role in organising the daily demonstrations in Manchester and issuing daily bulletins of the latest developments on the ground to raise public awareness in Britain and provide the media with the latest facts after the regime enforced a news blackout by blocking the internet and other lines of communications with the outside world in the early days of the uprising.