Puerto Vallarta. Flickr user HBarrison.
Ten miles up the Bay of Flags from Puerto Vallarta along Mexico’s Pacific coast, along tourist traps and getaways for the wealthy and celebrity, is Punta Minta. Its developers boast of large gated villas, luxury hotels, fine beaches and a Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. Following a tabloid-fodder August visit to the peninsula by Lady Gaga, the resort says: “we in Punta Mita have a culture of not revealing our celeb and Fame Monsters‘ whereabouts while in residence.”
But the resort almost featured another resident fame monster: Libyan party boy and military commander Saadi Gadhafi, son of deceased dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
According to Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poire, the Gadhafi family warlord — a soccer enthusiast with a reputation for partying and ordering attacks on unarmed protesters — attempted to flee to the resort town with the assistance of a Canadian private security company and a shadowy multinational team of contractors. The plot was foiled, however, following its detection in September by Mexican intelligence agents. Then last month, federal police in Mexico City swooped on the plotters, which included a Canadian ringleader, a Danish logistician and two Mexicans accused of creating false identity papers for the Gadhafi family.
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