Gadhafi’s rule is over
Posted Oct 21, 2011 06:35:37 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
GENEVA – The U.N. human rights office says there needs to be a probe into the circumstances of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s death.
A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says shaky amateur videos showing a captured Gadhafi first alive, then dead, were “very disturbing.”
Below is an interview with a CNN correspondent that was nearby when the capture took place.
WARNING: some parts of the video are graphic.
Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva on Friday that an existing U.N. panel investigating human rights abuses in Libya would likely examine the death. He says it might recommend a national or international probe.
Colville says the victims of Gadhafi’s despotic 42-year-rule deserve to see proper judicial procedures followed and perpetrators of abuses brought to trial.
Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe in his hometown of Sirte, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: “Don’t kill me, my sons.”
Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans vented decades of hatred by pulling the brutal dictator’s hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck.
Gadhafi’s death at age 69 came two months after he was driven from power and finally buried the nearly 42-year regime that turned oil-rich Libya into an international pariah.
Now Libya’s transitional leaders are faced with overcoming deep divisions and rebuilding nearly all of the country’s institutions from scratch in order to achieve their dreams of democracy.
In the capital of Tripoli yesterday, Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril called on Libyans to — quote — “put aside the grudges and only say one word, which is Libya, Libya, Libya.”
Around the country ecstatic Libyans took the streets in celebrations that included firing endless rounds of ammunition into the air.
A senior member of Libya’s National Transitional Council, Mohamed Sayeh, says the council will officially declare liberation on Saturday.
The N-T-C has long said it would form a new interim government within a month of liberation and hold elections within eight months.
Libya’s revolutionary forces, however, are an unruly mix of militias, and differences have already emerged between them.
Revolutionaries from Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi have accused each other of trying to dominate the new rule.
Islamic fundamentalists have also taken an increasingly prominent role, causing friction with more secular leaders by pushing for an Islamic state in Libya.
