A grab from a video taken from the mobile phone of a NTC fighter shows the capture of Libya?s strongman Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte on October 20. Gaddafi was brutally murdered in custody after his capture in his hometown by NTC fighters. afpSirte: Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, a wounded Muammar Gaddafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: ?Don?t kill me, my sons.? ?What do you want? Don?t kill me, my sons,? according to Bashagha and Hassan Doua, a fighter who was among those who captured him.
Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator?s hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck.
Bashagha said Gaddafi died in the ambulance from wounds suffered during the clashes.
Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the ambulance during the 120-mile drive to Misrata, said Gaddafi died from two bullet wounds ? to the head and chest.
Also killed in the city was one of his feared sons, Muatassim, while another son ? one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam ? was wounded and captured. An AP reporter saw cigarette burns on Muatassim?s body.
Bloody images of Gaddafi?s last moments raised questions over how exactly he died after he was captured wounded, but alive. Video on Arab television stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and pulling the goateed, balding Gaddafi, with blood splattered on his face and soaking his shirt.
Gaddafi struggled against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters pushed him onto the hood of a pickup truck. One fighter held him down, pressing on his thigh with a pair of shoes in a show of contempt.
Fighters propped him on the hood as they drove for several moments, apparently to parade him around in victory.
?Keep him alive, keep him alive!? someone shouts. ?We want him alive. We want him alive,? another man shouted before Gaddafi was dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.
Gaddafi then goes out of view and gunshots ring out.
?They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him,? one senior source in the NTC told Reuters. ?He might have been resisting.?
In what appeared to contradict the events depicted in the video, Libya?s ruling National Transitional Council said Gaddafi was killed when a gunfight broke out after his capture between his supporters and government fighters. He died from a bullet wound to the head, the prime minister said.
The NTC said no order had been given to kill him.
Later footage showed fighters rolling Gaddafi?s lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head. His body was then paraded on a car through Misrata, a nearby city that suffered a brutal siege by regime forces during the eight-month civil war that eventually ousted Gaddafi. Crowds in the streets cheered, ?The blood of martyrs will not go in vain.?
Thunderous celebratory gunfire and cries of ?God is great? rang out across Tripoli well past midnight, leaving the smell of sulfur in the air. People wrapped revolutionary flags around toddlers and flashed V for victory signs as they leaned out car windows. Martyrs? Square, the former Green Square from which Gaddafi made many defiant speeches, was packed with revellers.
The day began with revolutionary forces bearing down on the last of Gaddafi?s heavily armed loyalists who in recent days had been squeezed into a block of buildings of about 700 square yards.
A large convoy of vehicles moved out of the buildings, and revolutionary forces moved to intercept it, said Fathi Bashagha, spokesman for the Misrata Military Council, which commanded the fighters who captured him. At 8:30 a.m., Nato warplanes struck the convoy, a hit that stopped it from escaping, according to French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet.
Fighters then clashed with loyalists in the convoy for three hours, with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns. Members of the convoy got out of the vehicles, Bashagha said.
Gaddafi and other supporters fled on foot, with fighters in pursuit, he said. A Gaddafi bodyguard captured as they ran away gave a similar account to Arab TV stations.
Gaddafi and several bodyguards took refuge in a drainage pipe under a highway nearby. After clashes ensued, Gaddafi emerged, telling the fighters outside, ?What do you want? Don?t kill me, my sons,? according to Bashagha and Hassan Doua, a fighter who was among those who captured him.
Bashagha said Gaddafi died in the ambulance from wounds suffered during the clashes. Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the ambulance during the 120-mile drive to Misrata, said Gaddafi died from two bullet wounds ? to the head and chest.
A government account of Gaddafi?s death said he was captured unharmed and later was mortally wounded in the crossfire from both sides.
The TV images of Gaddafi?s bloodied body sent ripples across the Arab world and on social networks such as Twitter.
?He called us rats, but look where we found him,? said Ahmed Al Sahati, a 27-year-old government fighter, standing next to two stinking drainage pipes under a six-lane highway near Sirte.
On the ground, government fighters described scenes of carnage as they told stories of Gaddafi?s final hours.
Other government fighters who said they took part in Gaddafi?s capture, separately confirmed Bakeer?s version of events, though one said the man who ruled Libya for 42 years was shot and wounded at the last minute by one of his own men.
?One of Muammar Gaddafi?s guards shot him in the chest,? said Omran Jouma Shawan.
There were also other versions of events. NTC official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters Gaddafi had been finally cornered in a compound in Sirte after hours of fighting, and wounded in a gun battle with NTC forces.
He said Gaddafi kept repeating ?What is the matter? What?s going on? What do you want?? and resisted as NTC fighters seized him. He added that Gaddafi died of his wounds as he was being transported in an ambulance.
?He was bleeding from his stomach. It took a long time to transport him. He bled to death (in the ambulance),? he said.
Another NTC official, speaking to Reuters anonymously, gave a violent account of Gaddafi?s death: ?They (NTC fighters) beat him very harshly and then they killed him. This is a war.?
Some video footage showed what appeared to be Gaddafi?s lifeless body being loaded into an ambulance in Sirte.
One of the fighters who said he took part in the capture brandished a heavily engraved golden pistol he said he had taken from Gaddafi.
Fallen electricity cables partially covered the entrance to the pipes and the bodies of three men, apparently Gaddafi bodyguards lay at the entrance to one end, one in shorts probably due to a bandaged wound on his leg.
Four more bodies lay at the other end of the pipes. All black men, one had his brains blown out, another man had been decapitated, his dreadlocked head lying beside his torso.
Army chief Jabr was also captured alive, Bakeer said. NTC officials later announced he was dead.
Joyous government fighters fired their weapons in the air, shouted ?Allahu Akbar? and posed for pictures. Others wrote graffiti on the concrete parapets of the highway. One said simply: ?Gaddafi was captured here.?
UN demands probe into death
In Geneva, the United Nations human rights office called on Friday for a full investigation into the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
?It is unclear how he died. There is a need for an investigation,? UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva.
Referring to separate cell phone images showing a wounded Gaddafi first alive and then later dead amidst a jumble of anti-Gaddafi fighters after his capture in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday, he added: ?Taken together, they were very disturbing.?
An international commission of inquiry, launched by the UN Human Rights Council, is already investigating killings, torture and other crimes in Libya.
Colville said he expected that the team would look into the circumstances of Gaddafi?s death.
?It is a fundamental principle of international law that people accused of serious crimes should if possible be tried. Summary executions are strictly illegal. It is different if someone is killed in combat,? he told Reuters Television.
Amnesty International urged the revolutionary fighters to give a complete report, saying it was essential to conduct ?a full, independent and impartial inquiry to establish the circumstances of Col. Gaddafi?s death.?
Gaddafi to be buried in Islamic tradition
Libya?s new leaders have promised Muammar Gaddafi will be buried Friday according to Islamic norms, a day after his dramatic final hours when the fugitive dictator was dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, begging for his life as his hometown and last bastion fell to the revolutionaries.
The death, two months after Gaddafi?s ouster, finished off the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the oil-rich country into an international pariah and his own personal fiefdom. It also thrusts Libya into a new age in which its transitional leaders must overcome deep divisions and rebuild nearly all its institutions from scratch to achieve dreams of democracy.
The governing National Transitional Council said interim leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil will formally declare liberation on Saturday in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the revolution against Gaddafi?s rule began in mid-February. The NTC has always said it will form a new interim government within a month of liberation and will hold elections within eight months.
Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, who confirmed Gaddafi?s death on Thursday, said he will step down to make way for others to guide the oil-rich North African nation toward democracy.
?The forming of the new government is subject to the NTC and I myself will not be part of that new government,? Jibril said at a news conference in Tripoli. ?I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the grudges and only say one word, which is Libya, Libya, Libya.?
?He will be buried Friday according to Islamic custom,? Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said. NTC member Mohamed Sayeh said Gaddafi would be buried Friday in a Sirte cemetery, denying reports that he would be buried in a secret grave.
Deep hatred for the dictator
The outpouring of joy reflected the deep hatred of a leader who had brutally warped Libya with his idiosyncratic rule. After seizing power in a 1969 coup that toppled the monarchy, Gaddafi created a ?revolutionary? system of ?rule by the masses,? which supposedly meant every citizen participated in government but really meant all power was in his hands. He wielded it erratically, imposing random rules while crushing opponents, often hanging anyone who plotted against him in public squares.
?AP, Reuters, AFP
Source: daily-sun.com
Read More on prothom alo news
No comments:
Post a Comment