Gaddafi stays unburied in Misrata
2011-10-24 08:08
Benghazi - Libya's new rulers declared the country freed from Muammar Gaddafi's 42 years of one-man rule, saying the "Pharaoh of the times" was in history's garbage bin and a future of democracy and reconciliation beckoned.
But as thousands in Benghazi on Sunday heard the authorities announce "liberation", Gaddafi's rotting body, unburied and on public display in Misrata, was casting a shadow over the nation he once dominated.
Some fear National Transitional Council (NTC) chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil, a mild-mannered former justice minister, will find it hard to impose his will on his fractious revolutionary alliance, pointing to Misrata's insistence on displaying Gaddafi's body and that of his son Mutassim and to the lack of a clear account about how they met their end.
The lack of a clear plan for Gaddafi's burial suggests to some analysts that there is justification for fears of a descent into leaderless turmoil and armed infighting.
Some Muslims will be vexed that Gaddafi has not been given a rapid burial as demanded by Islam, although few Libyans share the outrage expressed by one of his exiled sons, Saadi, about the deaths of his father and brother Mutassim.
At the Benghazi celebrations there was no direct reference to what some outsiders see as Misrata's ghoulish display.
In a speech Jalil renewed an earlier promise to uphold Islamic law.
"All the martyrs, the civilians and the army had waited for this moment. But now they are in the best of places ... eternal heaven," he said, shaking hands with supporters.
Secret grave
There is international disquiet about increasingly graphic and disturbing images on the internet of abuse of what appears to be Gaddafi following his capture and the fall of his hometown of Sirte on Thursday.
Gaddafi's surviving family, in exile, wants his body and that of Mutassim to be handed over to tribal kinsmen from Sirte. NTC officials said they were trying to arrange a secret resting place to avoid loyalist supporters making it a shrine. Misrata does not want his body under its soil.
Saadi Gaddafi's lawyer said he was "shocked and outraged by the vicious brutality which accompanied the murders of his father and brother.
"The contradictory statements issued by the NTC excusing these barbaric executions and the grotesque abuse of the corpses make it clear that no person affiliated with the former regime will receive a fair trial in Libya, nor will they receive justice for crimes committed against them," lawyer Nick Kaufman said in an email sent to Reuters.
Libyan leaders have approved a request to open an investigation into Saadi over the murder of a footballer in 2005.