‘Don’t kill me, my sons’

CAPTURED ALIVE. This video frame grab images taken from Libyan TV show former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi alive and surrounded by revolutionary fighters in Libya after his capture on Thursday. The video shows a wounded Gadhafi with a blood-soaked shirt and bloodied face propped up against the hood of a truck and restrained by fighters. Image at right shows Gadhafi dead. AP/LIBYAN TV/AFP/AL JAZEERA

SIRTE, Libya—“Don’t kill me, my sons,” a wounded Moammar Gadhafi, his hands raised, begged revolutionary fighters on Thursday after he was dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe.

He was dead within an hour, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the 69-year-old despot’s hair and parading him, bloodied, on the hood of a truck.

Images of Gadhafi’s last moments raised questions over how exactly he died after he was captured wounded but alive.

Video on Arab TV stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and pulling the goateed, balding Gadhafi, with blood splattered on his face and soaking his shirt.

Gadhafi 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.

“We want him alive! We want him alive!” one man shouted before Gadhafi was dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.

Later footage showed fighters rolling Gadhafi’s lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head.

The corpse 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 Gadhafi.

Crowds in the streets cheered, saying: “The blood of martyrs will not go in vain.”

Died as a dog

Two of the five Bulgarian nurses imprisoned in Libya for eight years over an HIV scandal said Gadhafi “got what he deserved.”

“The news made me very happy. It’s a punishment. A dog like him deserved to die like a dog,” Valya Chervenyashka said. The nurses were tortured and twice sentenced to death under Gadhafi’s regime.

How it happened

Thursday began with revolutionary forces bearing down on the last of Gadhafi’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, spokesperson for the Misrata Military Council, which commanded the fighters who captured Gadhafi.

At 8:30 a.m., Nato warplanes struck the convoy, a hit that stopped it from escaping, according to French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet.

Fighters then clashed with loyalists in the convoy for three hours, with rocket-propelled grenades, antiaircraft weapons and machine guns. Members of the convoy got out of the vehicles, Bashagha said.

Gadhafi and other supporters fled on foot, with fighters in pursuit, he said. A Gadhafi bodyguard captured as they ran away gave a similar account to Arab TV stations.

Gadhafi and a number of bodyguards took refuge in a drainage pipe under a highway nearby.

After clashes ensued, Gadhafi 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 Gadhafi 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 Gadhafi died from two bullet wounds in the head and chest.

A government account of Gadhafi’s death said he was captured unharmed and later was mortally wounded in the crossfire from both sides.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam told AP that Muatassim Gadhafi, a son of the despot’s, was killed in Sirte, as well as Gadhafi’s Defense Minister Abu Bakr Younis.

Abdel-Aziz said Muatassim was shot in the chest.

Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi said Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, another son, had been wounded in the leg and was being held in a hospital in the city of Zlitan northwest of Sirte.

Shammam said Seif was captured in Sirte, but the senior NTC leadership did not immediately confirm it.

Burial delayed

Gadhafi’s burial has been delayed for a few days until Libya’s new rulers decide where to bury him, Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni said on Friday.

“I told them to keep it in the freezer for a few days … to make sure that everybody knows he is dead,” Ali Tarhouni told Reuters. He said the body was in Misrata.

Asked about the burial arrangements, including where Gadhafi would be buried, he said: “There is no decision yet.”

But another official of the National Transitional Council said there was a dispute within the NTC over what to do with Gadhafi’s body.

“They are not agreeing on the place of burial. Under Islam he should have been buried quickly, but they have to reach an agreement whether he is to be buried in Misrata, Sirte, or somewhere else,” said the official who declined to be named. The dispute could signal a rift between the NTC leadership and fighters on the ground who feel they should have a say in the decision on Gadhafi’s burial because they fought to oust the despot and then hunt him down.

Calls for probe

In Geneva, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said an investigation of the circumstances surrounding Gadhafi’s death was needed.

“On the issue of Gadhafi’s death yesterday, the circumstances are still unclear,” said Pillay’s spokesperson Rupert Colville.

“There should be some kind of investigation given what we saw yesterday,” Colville said. “The two videos… taken together are very disturbing.”

Nevertheless, Colville said, Gadhafi’s death and the fall of Sirte had led to “a new era” for Libya.

“One key aspect to obtain closure on the legacy of Gadhafi would be to ensure that justice is done,” he said.

Amnesty International also 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 Colonel Gadhafi’s death.”

Celebratory gunfire

Well past midnight after Gadhafi was killed, thunderous celebratory gunfire and cries of “God is great!” rang out across Tripoli, 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 Gadhafi made many defiant speeches, was packed with revelers.

In Sirte, ecstatic fighters celebrated the city’s fall by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air, and singing the national anthem.

Deep hatred

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, Gadhafi 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.

Abroad, Gadhafi posed as a Third World leader, while funding terror groups and guerrilla armies. His regime was blamed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the downing of a French passenger jet in Africa the following year, as well as the 1986 bombing of a German disco frequented by US servicemen that killed three people.  With reports from Reuters

First posted 12:03 am | Saturday, October 22nd, 2011