Fallen leader: Libya gives Qaddafi ‘inglorious’ secret burial

Fugitive Saif al-Islam said to be near border crossing.

LIBYA: Muammar Qaddafi and his son Mo’tassim were buried in a secret desert location on Tuesday, five days after the deposed Libyan leader was captured, killed and put on grisly public display.

“He (Qaddafi) has just been buried now in the desert along with his son,” National Transitional Council (NTC) commander Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters by telephone.

Qaddafi’s cleric, Khaled Tantoush, who was captured with him, prayed over the rotting bodies before they were taken from the compound in the coastal city of Misrata, where they had been on show, and handed to two NTC loyalists for burial, he said.

The NTC had worried many outsiders by displaying the corpses in a meat locker in the fiercely anti-Qaddafi city of Misrata until their decaying state forced them on Monday to call a halt.

Under pressure from Western allies, the NTC promised the same day to investigate how Qaddafi and his son were killed.

Mobile phone footage shows both alive after their capture. The former leader was seen being mocked, beaten and abused before he died, in what NTC officials say was crossfire.

The saga has made Western allies of Libya’s interim leadership queasy about the prospects for the rule of law and stable government in the post-Qaddafi era.

Determined to prevent Qaddafi’s grave from becoming a shrine for his supporters, the NTC wants to keep its location secret, refusing custody to his tribe, many of whom live in Sirte.

The prayers for the dead were attended by two of Qaddafi’s cousins, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, once leader of the feared People’s Guard, and Ahmed Ibrahim. Both were captured with him after a NATO air strike hit a convoy of vehicles trying to break out of Sirte, Qaddafi’s hometown, just after it fell.

One of Qaddafi’s sons, the enigmatic Saif al-Islam, remains on the run. Once viewed as a moderate reformer, Saif vowed to help his father crush his enemies once the revolt began.

An NTC official said Saif al-Islam was in the remote southern desert near Niger and Algeria and was set to flee Libya using a false passport.

He said Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi who, like Saif al-Islam, is wanted by the International Criminal Court, was involved in the escape plan.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2011.