Gaddafi family demands body; NATO ends Libya war

MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) - NATO called an end to its air war in Libya, and the clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.

In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.

"We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.

At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.

Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.

"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."

The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.

Gaddafi was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has since seen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them to respect his rights.

NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gaddafi was already dead when he picked up the body.

"I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said, in testimony that adds greater weight to the widespread assumption that Gaddafi was lynched.

The U.N. human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarily executed. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.

BURIAL DISPUTE

In Misrata, a local commander, Addul-Salam Eleiwa, showed off the body, torso bare, on a mattress inside a metal-lined cold-store by a market on Friday. There was a bullet hole in his head.

"He will get his rights, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expect he will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours," he said.

Dozens of people, many with cellphone cameras, filed in to see that he was dead.

"There's something in our hearts we want to get out," said Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, as he waited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."

In Tripoli, Gaddafi's death prompted a carnival-like celebration, with fireworks, a bouncy castle and candy floss for the children. "Muammar, bad," one small girl said to foreign journalists in English. "Boom boom."

"For some people from outside Libya it could look wrong that we are celebrating a death with our children," said one man with a child on his shoulders. "But it was 42 years with the devil."

RISKS OF DIVISION

Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and heir-apparent remains at large, believed by NTC officials to have escaped from besieged Sirte and headed for a southern border.

Without the glue of hatred for Gaddafi and his tribe to unite the factions, some fear a descent into the kind of strife that bedevils Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Optimists say that so far Libya's new rulers have quarreled but not fought.

"Can an inclusive, effective national government be formed? Yes, if factions can avoid fighting," Jon Marks, chairman of Britain's Cross Border Information consultancy said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC had promised to explain how Gaddafi was killed.

"They're dealing with the death itself as well as the aftermath in as transparent a way as I think they can," he said. "They've fought bravely to liberate their country from this dictator. And, you know, he met an ignominious end yesterday."

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Even stashed in a meat locker, Gadhafi divides Libya

Even stashed in a meat locker, Gadhafi divides Libya

Qaddafi's second son captured

Former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's second son Seif al-Islam was captured Friday in Libya's Zeltin city, 160 km east of the Libyan capital, Egypt's Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.

A field commander of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) told Al-Arabiya satellite channel over phone that Seif al-Islam had been captured in the south of the city and was now receiving medical treatment, Xinhua quoted the report as saying Friday evening.

Photos and a video of his detention will be made public within hours, said commander Ali el-Shawesh.

Shawesh, however, refused to reveal the gravity of Seif al-Islam's injuries.

The report could not be immediately confirmed by officials of Libya's National Transitional Council.

Qaddafi, who ruled Libya for 42 years, died Thursday after his hometown Sirte fell to the National Transitional Council fighters.

Seif al-Islam has been on the run since NTC forces took full control of Qaddafi's hometown Sirte Thursday.

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Qaddafi's body stashed in shopping center freezer

Moammar Qaddafi's blood-streaked body has been stashed in a commercial freezer at a shopping center as Libyans try to keep it away from crowds as they figure out where and when to bury the hated leader.

An AP correspondent saw the body Friday at the shopping center in the coastal city of Misrata, home of the fighters who killed the ousted leader a day earlier in his hometown of Sirte.

The body, stripped to the waist and wearing beige trousers, is laid on a bloodied mattress on the floor of a room-sized freezer where restaurants and stores in the center keep perishables. A bullet hole is visible on the left side of his head and in the center of his chest. Dried blood streaks his arms and head.

The burial of Qaddafi has been delayed until the circumstances of his death can be further examined and a decision is made about where to bury the body, Libyan officials said Friday, as the U.N. human rights office called for an investigation into his death.

The transitional leadership had said it would bury the dictator Friday in accordance with Islamic tradition. Bloody images of Qaddafi's last moments in the hands of angry captors have raised questions over his treatment minutes before his death. One son, Muatassim, was also killed but the fate of Qaddafi's one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam was unclear. Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi said Seif al-Islam was wounded and being held in a hospital in the city of Zlitan. But Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam on Friday that the son's whereabouts were uncertain.
Shammam said Qaddafi's body was still in Misrata, where it was taken after he was found in his hometown of Sirte, and revolutionary forces were discussing where it should be interred. Thursday's death of Qaddafi, two months after he was driven from power and into hiding, decisively buries 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. Many Libyans awoke after a night of jubilant celebration and celebratory gunfire with hope for the future but also concern that their new rulers might repeat the mistakes of the past.
Khaled Almslaty, a 42-year-old clothing vendor in Tripoli, said he wished Qaddafi had been captured alive. "But I believe he got what he deserved because if we prosecuted him for the smallest of his crimes, he would be punished by death," he said. "Now we hope the NTC will accelerate the formation of a new government and ... won't waste time on irrelevant conflicts and competing for authority and positions."
Bloody images of Qaddafi's last moments also cast a shadow over the celebrations, raising questions over how exactly he died. Video on Arab television stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and pulling the goateed, balding Qaddafi, with blood splattered on his face and soaking his shirt.

Qaddafi 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 Qaddafi was dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance. Later footage showed fighters rolling Qaddafi'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 Qaddafi. Crowds in the streets cheered, "The blood of martyrs will not go in vain."
Libyan leaders said it appeared that Qaddafi had been caught in the crossfire and it was unclear who fired the bullet that killed him. Shammam said a coroner's report showed that Qaddafi was killed by a bullet to the head and died in the ambulance on the way to a field hospital. Qaddafi was already injured from battle when he was found in the drainage pipe, Shammam said.

"It seems like the bullet was a stray and it could have come from the revolutionaries or the loyalists," Shammam said, echoing an account given by Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril the night before. "The problem is everyone around the event is giving his own story." Shammam said that the NTC was expecting a report from Financial Minister Ali Tarhouni who was sent as an envoy to Misrata on Thursday.
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 Qaddafi'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. NATO's governing body, meanwhile, was meeting Friday to decide when and how to end the seven-month bombing campaign in Libya, a military operation whose success has helped reinvigorate the Cold War alliance.
The U.N. Human Rights Council established an independent panel earlier this year to investigate abuses in Libya, and spokesman Rupert Colville said it would likely examine the circumstances of the 69-year-old leader's death. He said it was too early to say whether the panel -- which includes Canadian judge Philippe Kirsch, the first president of the International Criminal Court -- would recommend a formal investigation at the national or international level. "We believe there is a need for an investigation," Colville said. "More details are needed to ascertain whether he was killed in some form of fighting or was executed after his capture."

"The two cell phone videos that have emerged, one of him alive, and one of him dead, taken together are very disturbing," he told reporters in Geneva. Mohamed Sayeh, a senior member of NTC, said representatives from the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court would come to a "go through the paperwork."
Sayeh also says Qaddafi's body is still in Misrata, where it was taken after his killing in Sirte. He says Qaddafi will be buried with respect according to Islam tradition and will not have a public funeral. The ICC did not issue any official comments about Qaddafi, but judges at the court would need official confirmation -- most likely a DNA sample from the body -- that Qaddafi is dead before they could formally withdraw his indictment.
Qaddafi, Seif al-Islam and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi have been charged with crimes against humanity for the brutal crackdown on dissent as the uprising against the regime began in mid-February and escalated into a civil war.

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Gaddafi stashed away USD 200 billion

Washington, Oct 22 (PTI) Slain Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi secretly salted away an estimated staggering USD 200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments around the world before he was killed.

The Libyan dictator, who faced an ignominious but gruesome death, had hidden huge amounts of cash, gold reserves and investments and the amount is double that Western governments previously had suspected, the Los Angeles Times reported.

It claimed that Western officials have struggled all year not only to identify Gaddafi''s money but also to convince countries such as India, China and Russia to seize Libyan investments as required by the UN Security Council resolutions.

If the value proves accurate, the paper said, Gaddafi will go down in the history as the most rapacious as well as one of the most bizarre leaders of the world on a scale with the late Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire or the late Phillipino president Ferdinand Marcos.

The newspaper said that US administration officials were stunned last spring when they stumbled upon USD 37 billion in Libyan regime''s accounts and investments in the US. They quickly moved to freeze them, before Gaddafi or his aides could shift them.

Similarly, governments in France, UK, Germany and Italy have seized control of more than USD 30 billion held in these countries. .


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