Libyans rule out Qaddafi’s post-mortem
Former dictator’s body stored in a vegetable market freezer overnight.
MISRATA:
Military commanders in the Libyan city of Misrata said on Saturday that no post-mortem would be carried out on the body of Muammar Qaddafi despite concerns over how the toppled dictator died.
Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said an investigation was being conducted into the circumstances of Qaddafi’s killing following his capture, bloodied but still alive, during the fall of his hometown Sirte on Thursday, after several foreign governments and human rights watchdogs posed questions.
But the military leadership in Misrata, where Qaddafi’s body had been stored in a vegetable market freezer overnight and was again put on display for hundreds of curious onlookers on Saturday, insisted the inquiry would involve no autopsy.
“There will be no post-mortem today, nor any day,” Misrata military council spokesperson Fathi al Bashaagha told AFP. “No one is going to open up his body.”
His comments were confirmed by two other Misrata military chiefs.
Bashaagha said that the new regime’s military commander for the capital, Abdelhakim Belhaj, was expected to travel to Misrata later on Saturday to view the corpse of the man who ruled Libya with an iron rod for 42 years.
But he said there were no immediate plans for National Transitional Council (NTC) chief Abdel Jalil to visit.
The interim leader was in the main eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday visiting some of the wounded from the eight-month uprising that felled Qaddafi.“Yes,” he answered when asked if the circumstances of Qaddafi’s death were being investigated. He declined to take any further questions.
US President Barack Obama said on Saturday, “In Libya, the death of Muammar Qaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do,” he said.
But questions remain over how Qaddafi met his end after NTC fighters hauled him out of a culvert where he was hiding following Nato air strikes on the convoy in which he had been trying to flee his falling hometown.
Mobile phone videos show him still alive at that point.
Footage shows the former dictator, his face half-covered in blood, being dragged towards a vehicle by a delirious crowd and forced on to the bonnet. Those at the front push and shake him, pull him by the hair and hit him. At one point he appears to be trying to speak.
Subsequent footage shows him being hauled off the vehicle, still alive, and hustled through the screaming crowd, before he disappears in the crush and the crackle of gunfire can be heard. NTC leaders are adamant he was shot in the head when he was caught “in crossfire” between his supporters and new regime fighters soon after his capture. But in a video circulating on the Internet, a young fighter from Benghazi claims he shot Qaddafi twice after capturing him – once under the arm and once in the head. He says he died half an hour later.
Calling for a probe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the “way his death happened poses an entire number of questions”.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay also called for an investigation.
“On the issue of Qaddafi’s death yesterday, the circumstances are still unclear,” her spokesman Rupert Colville said. “There should be some kind of investigation given what we saw yesterday.”
Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2011.
Military commanders in the Libyan city of Misrata said on Saturday that no post-mortem would be carried out on the body of Muammar Qaddafi despite concerns over how the toppled dictator died.
Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said an investigation was being conducted into the circumstances of Qaddafi’s killing following his capture, bloodied but still alive, during the fall of his hometown Sirte on Thursday, after several foreign governments and human rights watchdogs posed questions.
But the military leadership in Misrata, where Qaddafi’s body had been stored in a vegetable market freezer overnight and was again put on display for hundreds of curious onlookers on Saturday, insisted the inquiry would involve no autopsy.
“There will be no post-mortem today, nor any day,” Misrata military council spokesperson Fathi al Bashaagha told AFP. “No one is going to open up his body.”
His comments were confirmed by two other Misrata military chiefs.
Bashaagha said that the new regime’s military commander for the capital, Abdelhakim Belhaj, was expected to travel to Misrata later on Saturday to view the corpse of the man who ruled Libya with an iron rod for 42 years.
But he said there were no immediate plans for National Transitional Council (NTC) chief Abdel Jalil to visit.
The interim leader was in the main eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday visiting some of the wounded from the eight-month uprising that felled Qaddafi.“Yes,” he answered when asked if the circumstances of Qaddafi’s death were being investigated. He declined to take any further questions.
US President Barack Obama said on Saturday, “In Libya, the death of Muammar Qaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do,” he said.
But questions remain over how Qaddafi met his end after NTC fighters hauled him out of a culvert where he was hiding following Nato air strikes on the convoy in which he had been trying to flee his falling hometown.
Mobile phone videos show him still alive at that point.
Footage shows the former dictator, his face half-covered in blood, being dragged towards a vehicle by a delirious crowd and forced on to the bonnet. Those at the front push and shake him, pull him by the hair and hit him. At one point he appears to be trying to speak.
Subsequent footage shows him being hauled off the vehicle, still alive, and hustled through the screaming crowd, before he disappears in the crush and the crackle of gunfire can be heard. NTC leaders are adamant he was shot in the head when he was caught “in crossfire” between his supporters and new regime fighters soon after his capture. But in a video circulating on the Internet, a young fighter from Benghazi claims he shot Qaddafi twice after capturing him – once under the arm and once in the head. He says he died half an hour later.
Calling for a probe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the “way his death happened poses an entire number of questions”.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay also called for an investigation.
“On the issue of Qaddafi’s death yesterday, the circumstances are still unclear,” her spokesman Rupert Colville said. “There should be some kind of investigation given what we saw yesterday.”
Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2011.