The final hours of Gaddafi
The world saw the video footage of Muammar Gaddafi's last moments. But until
now the exact details of how he ended up in a drainage pipe in Sirte - and
how he sustained the injuries clearly present before he was killed - were
less clear
<
http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/peter-popham> Peter Popham Author
Biography
Thursday 19 October 2012
The outlines of how Muammar Gaddafi died are already well known: gruesome
footage of him being abused and manhandled by rebel militiamen after his
capture on 20 October 2011 went around the world. But the exact
circumstances of how he came to be found, bloodied and bowed, in a concrete
pipe in Sirte, his home town, were less certain. Now a report by Human
Rights Watch (HRW), released yesterday, drawing on interviews with close
associates of the dictator who survived the final battle and rebels present
at his capture, provides appalling new detail about his last hours.
Only a few years before this man had been courted by Tony Blair and other
world leaders. Now he was holed up in the desert with few loyalists, rapidly
running out of food, patience and hope. Soon he was to die a hideous,
humiliating death.
The report claims that at least 66 members of Gaddafi's convoy were
summarily executed by the militias after their capture - a war crime, one
which the Libyan civilian and military authorities have an obligation to
investigate. To date they have shown no inclination to do so. And while the
Libyan authorities claim that Gaddafi himself was killed in crossfire during
the final battle, the evidence amassed by HRW strongly suggests that he was
effectively lynched. The testimony includes an admission by a key militia
commander that "the situation was a mess... it was a violent scene... it was
very confusing." Cellphone footage obtained by the organisation shows that
among other injuries he was stabbed in the anus, probably with a bayonet.
It was on the fall of Tripoli on 28 August 2011 that Gaddafi and a small
entourage fled the capital. Nobody was sure where he had gone: some members
of his family turned up in neighbouring Algeria. Now we know that he headed
to Sirte, 450km along the coast to the east, the formerly shabby village
which he had promoted as the capital of his putative "United States of
Africa."
Attacked from both Benghazi to the east and Misrata to the west, the siege
of this city of some 70,000 people continued for nearly two months. Its
defence was in the hands of Gaddafi's fourth son, Mutassim. As the militia
fighters closed in, Gaddafi and his companions were forced to move
frequently, finishing up in District Two, on the eastern outskirts.
"We first stayed in the city centre," Mansour Dhao, head of the People's
Guard, told HRW, "but then the mortars started to reach there... Finally we
moved to District Two. We didn't have a reliable food supply any more...
There was no medicine. We had difficulty getting water - the water tanks
were targeted, or maybe they were just hit in random shelling... We changed
places every four or five days."
Gaddafi himself "spent most of his time reading the Koran and praying", Dhao
said. "His communications with the world were cut off: there was no
television, nothing. We had no duties, we were just between sleeping and
being awake. Nothing to do.
"[As time went on] Muammar Gaddafi became more and more angry. Mostly he was
angry about the lack of electricity, communications and television, his
inability to communicate to the outside world. We would go and see him and
sit with him for an hour or so, and he would ask, 'Why is there no
electricity? Why is there no water?'"
Then during the night from October 19 to October 20, the remnant of
Gaddafi's forces holed up in District Two came under intensive and
continuous bombardment by rebel Grad missiles and artillery. Mutassim
organised a break-out, loading civilians and the wounded into a convoy of
pick-ups, heavily loaded with arms and ammunition. But the planned departure
time of 3.30 or 4am slipped to 8am, by which time the militia fighters were
ready for them.
The convoy's hopes of breaking through the encircling forces were slim. They
managed to reach a road leading south out of the city, but then a
drone-fired missile exploded next to the car carrying Gaddafi. "It caused
such a powerful blast that the air bags inflated and I was hit by shrapnel,"
said Dhao.
Mutassim Gaddafi's way was blocked in every direction, and drones and war
planes circled overhead. The road he now led the convoy down was blocked by
a militia base but he headed straight for it. "The convoy came towards our
brigade building," militia commander Khalid Ahmed Raid recalled, "and shot
at our gate with rocket-propelled grenades... so we began to fight back.
They tried to go around our base... we opened fire on them with our
[anti-aircraft] guns."
Nato planes now dropped two 12,500lb low-altitude airburst bombs on the
convoy, destroying 14 vehicles, killing at least 53 people and forcing
Gaddafi and his inner circle, all of whom survived, to flee on foot.
They took refuge in a nearby villa compound, but again came under heavy
militia fire. A survivor later reported seeing Gaddafi there, "wearing a
helmet and a bullet-proof vest, [with] a handgun in his pocket and carrying
an automatic weapon... Then the villa started being shelled so we ran. There
were a lot of cement construction blocks outside so we hid among those."
Mansour Dhao now persuaded his chief that they should go under the main road
by means of drainage pipes, with the hope of reaching the safety of farms on
the far side. But as soon as they emerged, militia fighters were on to them.
Gaddafi's guards threw grenades to force them, but the third one they threw
rebounded, exploding in their midst, killing the guard who threw it and
wounding Gaddafi in the head. Militia fighters poured down to the pipes,
astonished to find Gaddafi there.
It was in the subsequent three minutes and 38 seconds that the rebels' lust
for vengeance erupted, captured in the phone footage obtained by HRW. "The
situation was a mess," local militia commander Khalid Ahmed Raid admitted.
"It was a violent scene. He was put on the front of a pick-up truck that
tried to take him away and he fell off. It was very confusing. People were
pulling his hair and hitting him. We understood there needed to be a trial,
but we couldn't control everyone." When Gaddafi was eventually loaded into
an ambulance, he was "nearly naked and apparently lifeless," HRW states. By
the time he arrived in Misrata, a journey of at least two hours, he was
"almost certainly dead."
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Received on Fri Oct 19 2012 - 09:46:06 EDT
