* Gaddafi determined to hold western Libya--former Islamist
* Top officials, family closing ranks round Gaddafi
* Leader determined to crush opposition at any cost
* For more news on Libya, click on [ID:nLDE71F0BK]
By William Maclean, Security Correspondent
LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi was not bluffing when he vowed on Tuesday to defy mounting protests, a Libyan familiar with official thinking said, adding that the veteran leader would do "everything" to keep control of the capital.
Noman Benotman, who returned to Britain on Monday evening after spending the past 10 days in Tripoli, helped lead an armed Islamist rebellion against Gaddafi in the mid-1990s but has since built ties to reformists as well as Libyan security services under a programme of political reconciliation.
"I think really he will do another massacre to reinforce himself and send a message that 'I am very powerful, I am very strong'," Benotman told Reuters.
"He will do everything possible to control the western parts of the country. He will stay and fight until the last day."
Benotman did not elaborate on how he knew the thinking of Gaddafi's senior aides. But he has been in regular contact with Libyan officials this month to arrange the latest in a series of periodic releases from prison of his former colleagues in the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, a paramilitary group.
Benotman said a speech by Gaddafi on Tuesday in which he vowed to fight to the last man would probably provoke Libyans to step up their protests against his authority. He added:
"I expect a very hot night tonight, and at the latest tomorrow night, because Gaddafi is going to do what he said."
"He has used the terrorist strategy -- send your message by action, and then send it again with words. Tripoli has already seen the action in the past few days of violence."
Benotman said controlling the west was Gaddafi's immediate overriding goal after apparently losing the east to anti-government protesters. To do that, he would have to persuade security forces based in outlying western provinces that he was still in charge in the capital.
"He needs to control Tripoli just to prove to the other units and other areas that he is still in power. That's why he has decided (this course of action)," Benotman said.
AFRICAN MERCENARIES
"The strategy is not just to carry out a massacre -- you are also deploying the army at the same time to reinforce your strategy for security and stability."
In Tripoli itself, Gaddafi had deployed special paramilitary security forces backed by mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa.
Benotman described the situation as desperate. "It's unarmed people fighting the army with bare hands."
He said he believed Gaddafi was with his sons and the rest of his family at his Bab al-Aziziya main compound in Tripoli.
In a paper for the UK Quilliam thinktank, where he works as a counter-radicalisation expert, Benotman played down the role of the regular army in the unrest.
Gaddafi had long kept the regular army weak in order to prevent it from developing into a rival power base, he said.
"Reports of army units joining the demonstrators are therefore in themselves not necessarily significant or fatal to the regime on their own," he wrote.
He said the uprising had led the Gaddafi family and the Revolutionary Committees that govern the country to close ranks to defend the status quo, and the Gaddafi family had also closed ranks around Gaddafi himself.
"The likelihood of Gaddafi being forced out by senior members of his own regime therefore seems remote at present."
Benotman said tribal affiliations in the west of the country were wavering because most of the tribes in the east had come out in support of the demonstrators.
"Many of the key tribes in western Libya and in Tripoli (such as the Warfala, the Tarhuna and the Amazigh) are leaning towards the protesters but have so far not played an active role in the conflict," he wrote. "The anti-regime protesters would be greatly strengthened if these tribes actively joined them against Gaddafi." (Editing by Tim Pearce)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
