Libyan revolutionaries used dating website to dodge Gaddafi’s secret police

LIBYA’S revolutionaries posed as star-struck lovers on a dating site to organize their revolt against Col. Moamar Ghadafi, ABC News reported Thursday.

Former business and opposition leader Omar Shibliy Mahmoudi said he used Muslim dating site Mawada to rally people together while staying out of the gaze of the Libyan secret police, which monitors Twitter and Facebook.

Mahmoudi - leader of the Ekhtalef, or “Difference,” movement - acted as if he was looking for a wife under the profile name “Where is Miriam?” and sent coded love letters to spur people to revolution.

Since men cannot talk to other men on the site, revolutionaries posed as women to make contact with Mahmoudi, taking on names such as “Sweet Butterfly,” “Opener of the Mountain,” “Girl of the Desert” and “Melody of Torture.”

Supporters would use phrases such as “May your day be full of Jasmine,” referring to the uprisings in the region which have been dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution.”

The coded conversations were used to gauge support for the cause and direct people to social networking site Yahoo Messenger for more detailed conversations. The revolutionaries would then use the messaging service and text messages to organize their activities further, avoiding scrutiny from authorities.

Communications would continue through text messages and Yahoo Messenger, to avoid authorities becoming suspicious.

Mahmoudi said he attracted 171,323 “admirers” to a number of profiles on the dating site before Libya’s internet crashed Saturday. He had aimed to attract 50,000 as a sufficient number to take to the streets in protest.

Heh.