Haji Saleh lifts his T-shirt to expose a 30-centimetre slash wound snaking across his side and back. Two other long gashes, secured with 20 staples, run down his shaved head. Photo: Ariadne Massa

Recovering in hospital from multiple stab wounds, Haji Salah believes he was attacked in Paceville two weeks ago because of his previous connection with Libya’s slain leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The 36-year-old, who was granted humanitarian protection and has been in Malta since November 2013, recounted how, intoxicated, he was walking through a dark Paceville street at 2am when somebody raced towards him, grabbed him from the back and stabbed him.

Doubled up in pain, Mr Salah struggled and, as he tried to confront his aggressor, he felt the knife slash open his head. Blinded by his own blood, he shouted out: “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

The chilling reply came back in Arabic. “We will kill all of you who worked with Gaddafi, or kick you out.”

Those were the last words before he started losing consciousness and collapsed.

“I was convinced I was going to die,” Mr Saleh told The Sunday Times of Malta, recalling how he had tried to crawl back for help.

Mr Saleh, who was only discharged from hospital on Thursday, after the stabbing rampage in Paceville on September 13, lifts his T-shirt to expose a 30-centimetre slash wound snaking across his side and back. Two other long gashes, secured with 20 staples, run down his shaved head.

Using his friends as translators, Mr Saleh said he neither recognised nor knew the aggressor.

This is not the first time Mr Saleh has been attacked for having been a supporter of the deceased Libyan dictator.

Proffering crumpled hospital records, he said that at the start of the Libyan revolution, in February 2011, he was leaving a radio station in Libya after speaking in support of the Col. Gaddafi when somebody shot him in the groin.

Fighting for his life in recent days has made Mr Saleh extremely anxious and he has spent the past days mulling over the unprovoked attack.

He is convinced that somebody must have told his aggressor that he had worked with Gaddafi, as that seems the only plausible explanation, but he cannot understand why other innocent bystanders were also stabbed in the attack.

‘We will kill all of you who worked with Gaddafi...’

Shortly after the incident, police arrested a Libyan and on September 14 charged him with the attempted murder of Mr Saleh and Dutchman Antoon Van der Heide, and seriously injuring Richard Galea, Libyan Ali Muhannad Fadlalla, and Dutchmen Brian Jan Bos and De Roo Neik.

That night Mr Saleh had been in Paceville since 8.30pm. By 2am he decided to call it a night. His friend was waiting near St George’s Bay to give him a lift and he was heading there alone when he was attacked. Accepting that he was “drunk”, Mr Saleh said contrary to what was being claimed he had not been harassing women before the incident happened though he was trying to make conversation.

“All I told them, was ‘hello beautiful, come spend the night with me’. I didn’t dare touch them; I’d have risked being slapped. Women are too powerful,” he said.

“And anyway, does saying those words merit being stabbed?”

Mr Saleh is angry that this attack has only served to perpetuate the idea that Libyans are coming to Malta and causing trouble.

“I respect the country and its laws, but the Maltese are right to think this way and be upset when something like this happens. It gives Arabs a bad name.”