Gaddafi’s corpse continues to attract impatient Misrata hordes

Queues continue at the meat cooler that houses the body of deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi Ritha Mohammed crouched with a napkin to wipe the soles of his daughter’s shoes, which he feared might have picked up the dirt and stench that spilled from Colonel Gaddafi’s corpse, which still lies on public view in Misrata. “Just in case,” he said, as he cleaned the five-year-old. He quickly moved on to dust down the carry cot that held his new-born son who, like the four young girls in their new dresses, he had ushered in to see the dead despot. “I wanted them all to witness this. This will be a day we will all remember.” An impatient crowd seethed around Mohammed, shouting and surging against guards who had linked arms to prevent the meat cooler holding Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his military chief, from being overrun. The three decaying bodies inside ought to have repelled the hordes. In Misrata, they did just the opposite. A growing throng of at least several thousand snaked throughout the day for a chance to see the ignominious end of a tyrant, who had been so terrifying and out of reach to them all for more than four decades. Now here he was vanquished and shrivelled. Even three days after Gaddafi’s death, it still hardly seemed possible. “He made our lives hell,” said Mohammed. “I wanted to see him dead with my own eyes. Who cares if it’s not dignified for him. That was not his first concern for any of the people here.” Many of the people queuing in the grounds of this vegetable market on the outskirts of Misrata said they had come to see Gaddafi’s corpse for the same reason. The ghoulish scene had an unedifying head-on-a-stake feel to it but it was also a collective closure for residents of a city that had suffered more than any other during eight grinding months of civil war. “There are so many rumours in Libya that it’s difficult to believe anything without verifying it,” said Tareq Zawabi, who had waited 90 minutes for the chance to survey the three corpses. “He didn’t look like I had imagined. He was a lot smaller.” As each day passes, the three bodies are becoming less and less suitable for public view. But uncertainty still surrounds their fate, with Gaddafi’s surviving family in Algeria demanding the remains for burial and Libya’s interim government not yet sure what to do with them. One of many obstacles facing Libya’s provisional leadership is its own human rights record, and the question of whether Gaddafi was killed in the minutes following his capture in Sirte. A forensic report in Misrata on Sunday concluded that Gaddafi had died from a bullet to the head. The finding added to the weight of evidence that suggests he was killed in the frantic minutes after his capture in Sirte, three hours to the east. It is still unclear who fired the fatal shot, and under what circumstances. Dr Othman al-Zintani, Libya’s chief pathologist, carried out the autopsy. He said it was “obvious” Gaddafi had died “from a gunshot wound to the head”. He did not elaborate but appeared to be referring to the neat entry wound clearly visible on the left side of Gaddafi’s head, and shown in numerous shots of his corpse screened around the world. Zintani said: “There are still several issues. We have to pass [the report] to the prosecutor general, but everything will be revealed publicly. Nothing will be hidden.” A Misrata rebel claimed to have witnessed Gaddafi’s final moment. “I was there when he was shot,” said Adam Zwabi, one of thousands of fighters who were chasing the remnants of Gaddafi’s loyalists last Thursday. “I heard the bullet and I saw him after he fell.” Libya’s National Transitional Council has changed its version of Gaddafi’s death, no longer suggesting he was killed in crossfire. Even the unit that captured him, know as Katiba Goran, are sanguine about how Gaddafi died. “Did anyone complain when the Americans shot Osama [bin Laden] in the head?” asked a rebel leader, Moustafa Zoubi, as he twirled on his desk the golden gun seized from Gaddafi’s luggage. “One of the resistance fighters became overcome with anger. He acted before anyone could stop him.” Nevertheless, the rebels have rearranged Gaddafi’s body to hide the bullet wound. His head has been tilted to the left, obscuring the entry point, just above his left ear. All three bodies have been wrapped in new grey blankets. How Gaddafi died does not seem to matter much in a city that seems inured to brutality. Throughout central Misrata, where ravaged buildings line sweeping boulevards, at least 10,000 people are thought to have been killed in months of fierce fighting. “The price for this freedom has been very, very high,” said Radwan Zwabi, as celebratory gunfire rattled nearby. “And I don’t know what’s been left behind. On the one hand, I celebrate this day, but the uncertainty is profound. What has Gaddafi done to these people, these young boys who killed him? They knew nothing else. But now they must learn something else, another way, or we will never move on.” The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Britain’s defence secretary, Philip Hammond, both called on Sundayfor a full investigation into the circumstances of Gaddafi’s death. The Libyan revolutionaries’ image had been “a little bit stained” by Gaddafi’s death, Hammond told the BBC. “It’s certainly not the way we do things. We would have liked to see Colonel Gaddafi going on trial to answer for his misdeeds.” Muammar Gaddafi Libya Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk

Posted by on October 23, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.