Gaddafi body kept in shopping center freezer, burial delayed.

Mangalore Today / PTI

Misrata (Libya), Oct 21: Moammar Gaddafi’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 Associated Press correspondent saw the body on 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.

Gaddafi’s burial has been delayed until his death can be further examined and a decision is made about where to inter the body, Libyan officials said on 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 on Friday in accordance with Islamic tradition. Bloody images of Gaddafi ’s last moments, however, have raised questions over how exactly he died after he was captured wounded, but alive.

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.

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 Gaddafi’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.

“The forming of the new government is subject to the NTC and I myself will not be part of that new government,” Jibril said at a news conference in Tripoli. “I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the grudges and only say one word, which is Libya, Libya, Libya.”


Last moments of Col. Gaddafi

Giving the first hand account of the dictator’s last moments, the NYT quoted the two fighters, 21-year-old Omran Shaaban, and his unnamed friend, who claimed that they were the first to confront the dictator lying injured in the pipe.

 

 

 

 

 

“When he saw us” he said in his trademark indignation “what’s happening?”.

They said he was bleeding from his head and chest, but he was well enough to speak.  Without clarifying how Gaddafi was killed, Shaaban displayed in his hometown Misurata the trophies of the revolution.

They included Gaddafi’s ‘golden gun’, his ‘satellite phone’, his ‘brown scarf’ and one ‘black boot’.  NYT said, amid the other souvenirs of war, the biggest prize was Gaddafi’s body which was shuttled around Misurata, the whole of last night.

But later it was taken to a reception room of a pink villa as local military leaders came to take a look and snap pictures.

He had what appeared to be a small wound just below his chest and what looked like a gunshot wound to his left temple.  His face was clean, but his arms were caked with blood.

Several visitors tugged at his signature locks.  Fighters from Misurata who suffered grievously under a long siege by Gaddafi’s troops in the spring.  Shaaban said that they had got the war trophies as Gaddafi was carrying a silver gun in his hand and in a bag nearby was the golden gun.

Gaddafi’s prized last possessions were windfall of spoils for the young man of Misurata, who have lived only half as long as dictator’s rule in Libya.