Muammar Gaddafi: wounds hold key to how he died
Commander: We wanted him alive, but things got out of
control:
MISRATA, Libya,
Oct 22 (Reuters)
Libyan forces guarding Muammar Gaddafi’s body in a cold storage room
on Saturday let in members of the public to view the deposed leader for
a second day, but the wounds that may hold the clue to how he died were
covered up.
Gaddafi’s body lay on a mattress on the floor of the cold room, as it
did on Friday when hundreds of members of the public filed in to see for
themselves that the man who ruled Libya for 42 years was really dead.
But unlike the previous day, Gaddafi’s body was covered by a blanket
that left only his head exposed, hiding the bruises on his torso and
scratch marks on his chest that had earlier been visible.
And, crucially, a Reuters reporter who viewed the body said,
Gaddafi’s head had been turned to the left. That meant a bullet hole
that earlier could be seen on the left side of his face, just in front
of his ear, could no longer be seen.
That bullet hole, and the other wounds, could help solve the riddle
of whether, as Libya’s new rulers said, he was shot in crossfire in a
battle or, as some accounts suggest, he was killed by the fighters who
caught him.
A local military commander in the city of Misrata, where the force
which captured him took his body, said “over-enthusiastic” fighters took
matters into their own hands when they came face to face with the man
they despise.
“We wanted to keep him alive but the young guys, things went out of
control,” he said speaking on condition of anonymity.
Few people in Libya — where thousands of people, including civilians,
were killed by Gaddafi’s forces in the seven-month rebellion — say they
are troubled by the manner of his death.
But if he was indeed killed by his captors, it will cast doubt on the
promises by Libya’s new rulers to respect human rights and prevent
reprisals. It would also embarrass Western governments which gave their
wholehearted backing to the NTC.
The dramatic minutes leading up to Gaddafi’s death were chaotic,
violent and gruesome — as testified by the grainy mobile phone footage
seen by the world of the former leader, bloodied and dazed, being
dragged along by NTC fighters.
What is not captured in the footage, and is missing from accounts of
the events given by fighters who were there, is how he died and who
killed him.
Gaddafi was still alive when he was captured hiding in a storm drain
outside his home town of Sirte, but he had blood streaming down the side
of his face.
Government fighters hauled him onto the bonnet of a Toyota pick-up
truck with the intention, one of them said, of getting him through the
crowd of fellow fighters and to an ambulance parked about 500 metres
(yards) away.
Gaddafi can be heard in one video saying “God forbids this” several
times as slaps from the crowd rain down on his head.
“This is for Misrata, you dog,” said one man slapping him.“Do you
know right from wrong?” Gaddafi says.
“Shut up you dog,” someone replies as more blows rain down.Misrata,
one of the heartlands of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion, suffered months of
siege and artillery bombardment at the hands of his forces.
Another video shows Gaddafi being heaved off the bonnet of the truck
and dragged towards a car, then pulled down by his hair. “Keep him
alive, keep him alive!” someone shouts.
But another man in the crowd lets out a high-pitched hysterical
scream. Gaddafi then goes out of view and gunshots ring out. One of the
fighters present said Gaddafi was in a bad way but alive when he was put
in the ambulance.
Yet the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, said Gaddafi was dead when he
picked him up and he then drove the body to the city of Misrata. “I
didn’t try to revive him because he was already dead,” Jaghdoun said.
In the cold store in Misrata on Saturday, the body of one of
Gaddafi’s sons, Mo’tassim, had been moved from another location
elsewhere in Misrata and placed next to his dead father.
The circumstances leading to the death of Mo’tassim, his father’s
national security adviser who was also captured in Sirte, are similarly
murky.
A Reuters reporter was shown a one-minute segment of mobile phone
footage in which a man, who resembled Mo’tassim, was squatting in a
room. He was stripped to the waist, and smoking a cigarette.
He did not appear badly wounded.Someone could be heard telling him
repeatedly: “Say Allahu Akbar, say Allahu Akbar.” The phrase, which
means “God is greatest”, is a favourite mantra of the anti-Gaddafi
fighters.
At some point after that, he died. When a Reuters reporter saw his
body on Thursday evening, it was laid out in a private house in Misrata.
Wounds to his jaw and part of his neck were visible.
On Saturday in the cold store, Mo’tassim’s body was covered up to the
next with a blanket. The wounds to his jaw and neck had been stitched
up.
The people queueing outside the cold store, waiting to view the
bodies, did not seem concerned about how their former leader and his son
died.Fighters supervising the viewing distributed surgical masks. Two
Filipino nurses filed in to take pictures. Children were among the 20 or
so people waiting outside for their turn to go in.
Abdullah al-Senussi, a man with a white beard and dressed in a
traditional Libyan outfit, was so frail he had to be supported by people
on either side of him as he made his way to the cold store.
“We wanted to know if it was true or not,” he said. “We wanted to see
him.”
A woman who was accompanying him, Aziza Al-Farsi, said she had been
waiting for the day when she would see Muammar Gaddafi dead. “We lived
for 42 years in injustice,” she said.
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