Today, photographs of young men stare out from tatty, fading posters all over Tripoli, stuck up on walls and street corners by families still searching for them. They are constant reminder of the price of ending 42 years of dictatorship, as Libyans now take stock of their cherished freedom.
Optimism is high in the new Libya but there is still plenty to worry about.
The 600 pro-revolution militias estimated to have been set up last year have withdrawn from the streets but still sometimes shoot it out with each other, often because of petty squabbles. They hold at least 4,000 detainees in private dungeons, and nobody knows how to take away their massive arsenals.
Not all Gaddafi loyalists have given up either - a spate of car bombs in Tripoli in the past month was blamed on them - and there have been kidnappings, assassinations and bomb attacks in the troubled second city Benghazi, with foreign diplomats targeted as well as Libyans.
But elections in July went well. A moderate government was elected, while the Islamist parties which swept the board in Egypt and Tunisia came nowhere.
Libyans, by all accounts, pride themselves religiously observant anyway, with no need for politicians to lecture them on Islamic pieties. Pro-Western moderates have promised to guide the nation to a prosperous, democratic future, helped by generous oil reserves – 1.5 million barrels a day are flowing, nearly the pre-revolution rate – and an economy which has rebounded since last year's disruption.
A recent International Monetary Fund report estimated the growth rate this year at 116 per cent, and predicted close to double-digit growth up to 2016, raising hopes of a job boom for the huge number of disgruntled young men who flocked to join the revolution last year.
So far only a trickle of foreign businessmen have dared to come looking for new opportunities, but Libyan entrepreneurs are hopeful; the price of hotels along the unspoiled coastline and in exotic desert towns has shot up in anticipation of a tourist boom.
The optimism, after years of dictatorship, is a comfort to those families who lost sons last year, as Mr Naama did.
His torment started on August 22nd when his son Ahmed, 23, impetuously jumped into his car and drove from his home in the east of Tripoli, still occupied by Gaddafi loyalists, to reach the city centre, which had been liberated by rebels. After months of waiting for Gaddafi's downfall he was desperate to celebrate freedom with his friends.
But he immediately ran into a checkpoint run by loyalist militia, who forced him to call his brothers, pretending he had been in a traffic accident and needed help. His family thinks the loyalists found a revolutionary flag on his mobile phone and beat him to force him to make the call. Four of his brothers fell for the trick.
For months afterwards, as Libyans enjoyed their longed-for freedom, Mr Naama scoured the mortuaries, prisons and mass graves left behind by the dictator. There were hints of his sons' fate, a possible witness, dead ends and false leads, and an extraordinary meeting in prison with the Gaddafi loyalist who detained them. But no firm evidence.
Like other families who lost sons, Mr Naama realised months ago that they must be dead - or, as he calls them, "martyrs". He now clings to the hope he will one day find their bodies to give them a proper burial.
When he began his search he put posters up with photos of his boys and his phone number. It didn't take long to realise that even though his family had suffered cruel luck – a day after they were detained his suburb was liberated – they were by no means the only ones.
"I received hundreds of calls, including about 60 from other families who had lost boys in those chaotic days," he said. "There were hundreds of people searching for their sons."
The lucky ones were reunited with gaunt men who staggered out of Gaddafi's prisons. Some clung to hope that their missing relatives may still be lying incapacitated in a hospital somewhere, or perhaps suffered an injury causing them to lose their memories and forget who they were. But most gave up hope long ago.
The Ministry for Martyrs and the Missing, set up at the end of last year, has about 800 revolutionaries on its missing file, and believes the figures are far higher for Gaddafi loyalists, many of whom were hapless conscripts killed in the last battles.
Ironically, the loyalists' families have far more chance of finding their loved ones alive because many are incarcerated in the makeshift prisons of pro-revolution militias. But the ministry admits that most of those who were on the wrong side last year are too scared to come forward.
Its officials have collected DNA samples from Mr Naama and relatives like him in the hope of identifying the victims when mass graves are one day dug up.
Mohammed Hamed, a chubby engineer who started collecting evidence about the unidentified dead last year when he worked in a hospital, is now an official at the ministry. When relatives arrive searching for clues he brings out a gruesome collection of photographs of dead fighters and dug-up graves.
"Those five boys are probably in a mass grave in Tajoura, just outside Tripoli," he said. "We think about 400 bodies were dumped in there last August when the killing was at its worst. One day we will have the technology to DNA test the bodies and identify who is in that pit."
That is a fragment of hope for Mr Naama to cling on to. A neat, slight man who lives in a large but modest bungalow in a suburb built for professionals, he is able to discuss the loss of five sons calmly, after a year of retelling his story repeatedly.
His sons sympathised with the revolution but didn't take part in it, he said. Ahmed, a mechanical engineer, was the first to be stopped at the checkpoint.
Then three brothers responded to his call together - Faisal, 21, a geography student and the youngest of the five, Abu Bakr, 26, an aviation engineer, and Ali, 29, a mechanical engineer. Finally the oldest, Mohammed, 31, a mechanical engineer, went to see what had happened to the others.
Proud of his sons' range of qualifications, Mr Naama remarks: "They were the kind of people who could have helped build the new Libya."
Since then, Mr Naama, who has been helped in his search by his two other surviving sons, has discovered some tantalising clues to their fate.
One neighbour, a Gaddafi loyalist, claimed to have seen three of the sons in Gaddafi's Bab Azizya compound shortly before it was overrun.
After he heard the neighbour's claims, Mr Naama had to force himself to search through a pile of burnt corpses of executed captives discovered in vicinity in the days after the rebel takeover.
Last May, he was contacted by a sympathetic official who said somebody significant had been caught; Masood Sirtawia, the head of the Gaddafi militia who was in charge of the checkpoint where his sons were detained.
"I met him in prison in Tripoli," Mr Naami said. "He looked hard, like the other Gaddafi loyalists – they were criminals without mercy. I asked him about my boys, and he said that the military came and took them away. I don't believe him. I'm sure he knows something else but isn't saying." The encounter left him feeling numb.
"I don't want revenge against Sirtawia but I do want him to stand trial, and if he is found guilty, hanged," Mr Naama added. "But most of all I want to know what happened to my sons."
Yet for all the family's terrible pain, he is convinced that the new Libya will be worth the sacrifice.
"We have elections and freedom of speech now, and we know that our money will be spent on health and education for the Libyan people instead of wasted on the Gaddafi family. We have a good future.
"I only wish my sons were still here to see the free Libya that they hoped for."
