Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mo’tassim were buried in a secret desert location on Tuesday, five days after the desposed Libyan leader was captured, killed and put on grisly public display.
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-Gaddafi era.
“He (Gaddafi) has just been buried now in the desert along with his son,” National Transitional Council (NTC) commander Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters by telephone. Gaddafi’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 disquieted many outsiders by displaying the corpses in a meat locker in the fiercely anti-Gaddafi city of Misrata until their decay forced them on Monday to call a halt. Under pressure from Western allies, the NTC promised the same day to investigate how Gaddafi and his son were killed. Mobile phone footage shows both alive after their capture. The former Libyan leader was seen being mocked, beaten and abused before he was shot, in what NTC officials say was crossfire.
One of Gaddafi’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 Libyan revolt began. An NTC official said Saif al-Islam had a false passport and was in the remote southern desert near Niger and Algeria and was set to flee Libya, with the NTC powerless to stop him. He said Gaddafi’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. Gaddafi’s death allowed the NTC to declare Libya’s “liberation” on Sunday in Benghazi, the seat of the revolt. NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil also announced that Libya had “taken Islamic sharia as the source of legislation”, raising concerns about the country’s future direction.
