Some things do not ring true. According to Dhao, Gaddafi was moving from place to place and apartment to apartment until last week, but given the state of the siege of Sirte at that stage it seems unlikely that he could have entered the city from outside. The net was closing around the last loyalists who were squeezed into a pocket, surrounded on all sides, that was becoming ever smaller by the day.
Dhao made no mention either of the attack on the Gaddafi convoy by a US Predator drone and a French Rafale jet as it tried to break out of Sirte, attempting to drive three kilometres through hostile territory before it was scattered and brought to a halt by rebel fighters. It is possible that Dhao did not know that the first missiles to hit the Gaddafi convoy as it tried to flee came from the air. What is clear is that at around 8am on Thursday, as National Transitional Council fighters launched a final assault to capture the last remaining buildings in Sirte, in an area about metres square, the pro-Gaddafi forces had also readied a large convoy to break out.
These armed vehicles were leaving Sirte at high speed and were attempting to force their way around the outskirts of the city. The vehicles were carrying a substantial amount of weapons and ammunition, posing a significant threat to the local civilian population. The convoy was engaged by a Nato aircraft to reduce the threat. It was that air attack — which destroyed around a dozen cars — that dispersed the convoy into several groups, the largest numbering about As NTC fighters descended on the fleeing groups of cars, some individuals jumped from their vehicles to escape on foot, among them Gaddafi and a group of guards.
Finding a trail of blood, NTC fighters followed it to a sandy culvert with two storm drains. In one of these Gaddafi was hiding. Accounts here differ. According to some fighters quoted after the event, he begged his captors not to shoot. What is certain from several of the clips of video footage — most telling that shot by Ali Algadi — is that Gaddafi was dazed but still alive, although possibly already fatally wounded. The question is what happens between this and later images of a lifeless Gaddafi lying on the ground having his shirt stripped off and propped in the back of a pickup truck and the next sequence which shows him dead.
Gaddafi fitted the bill as an authoritarian ruler who had endured for more years than the vast majority of his citizens could remember. But he was not so widely perceived as a western lackey as other Arab leaders, accused of putting outside interests before the interests of their own people. He had redistributed wealth - although the enrichment of his own family from oil revenues and other deals was hard to ignore and redistribution was undertaken more in the spirit of buying loyalty than promoting equality.
He sponsored grand public works, such as the improbable Great Man-Made River project , a massive endeavour inspired, perhaps, by ancient Bedouin water procurement techniques, that brought sweet, fresh water from aquifers in the south to the arid north of his country. There was even something of a Tripoli Spring, with long-term exiles given to understand that they could return without facing persecution or jail.
When the first calls for a Libyan "day of rage" were circulated, Gaddafi pledged - apparently in all seriousness - to protest with the people, in keeping with his myth of being the "brother leader of the revolution" who had long ago relinquished power to the people.
As it turned out, the scent of freedom and the draw of possibly toppling the colonel, just as Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali had been toppled, was too strong to resist among parts of the Libyan population, especially in the east. Some of the first footage of rebellion to come out of Benghazi showed incensed young Libyans outside an official building smashing up a green monolith representing the spurious liberation doctrine that had kept them enslaved since the s - the Green Book. As the uprising spread, and the seriousness of the threat to his rule became apparent, Gaddafi showed he had lost none of the ruthlessness directed against dissidents and exiles in the s and s.
This time it was turned on whole towns and cities where people had dared to tear down his posters and call for his downfall. Regular troops and mercenaries nearly overwhelmed the rag-tag rebels, consisting of military deserters and ill-trained militiamen brought together under the banner of the National Transitional Council NTC.
The colonel could afford to dismiss them as wayward year-olds, "given pills at night, hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe". The intervention of Nato on the rebels' side in March, authorised by a UN resolution calling for the protection of civilians, prevented their seemingly imminent annihilation - but it was months before they could turn the situation to their advantage. Then came the fall of Tripoli and Gaddafi went into hiding, still claiming his people were behind him and promising success against the "occupiers" and "collaborators".
His dictatorial regime had finally crumbled, but many feared that he might remain at large to orchestrate an insurgency. He met his ignominious and grisly end, when NTC forces found him hiding in a tunnel following a Nato air strike on his convoy as he tried to make a break from his last stronghold, the city of Sirte, where it had all begun. The exact circumstances of his death remain in dispute, either "killed in crossfire", summarily executed, or lynched and dragged through the streets by jubilant, battle-hardened fighters.
Though it meant the Libyan people - and other victims around the world - were robbed of proper justice, the news sparked wild celebrations across his former domain that nearly 42 years of rule and misrule had truly come to a close. Early promise.
Political theorist. Al-Saadi al-Gaddafi, 48, who was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was acquitted and released Sunday. The Presidential Council announced that "the recent releases of political prisoners in Libya come within the framework of national reconciliation," which was officially launched Sept. The statement asserts that the release took place within a political context but was given a "judicial" character, which drops all charges against him, and restores his political rights, including the right to run for elections, especially since the Presidential Council implicitly described him as a "political prisoner.
According to the Africa Gate News outlet, which is known for being close to Said al-Islam, he will run for the presidency in the election slated for Dec. Notably, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, was sentenced to death on charges related to war crimes and crimes against humanity by a court in Tripoli and an arrest warrant was issued by the Military Prosecutor on Aug.
He is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on similar charges. But the criminal court has not yet issued its verdict which means that the position is more political than legal. Hence, a presidential pardon or acquittal as a "political opponent" would open the doors for Gaddafi to run in the race.
Rebels killed Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte on October 20, , months into the NATO-backed rebellion that ended his four-decade rule. Residents of Bani Walid, a stronghold of the Warfala tribe -- the country's biggest and a key pillar of Gaddafi's rule -- had backed him to the bitter end.
Many fighters from the town were killed, with more dying in further battles when rival militia groups attacked. Today, dusty wind whips through the town centre, where a decommissioned tank overlooks a dried-up fountain and a board bearing pictures of "martyrs" hangs above a pile of mortar shells.
Bani Walid lies in an oasis some kilometres miles southeast of Libya's capital Tripoli. The red, black and green flag of the pre-Gaddafi years, adopted again by rebels in , is nowhere to be seen.
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