Gaddafi to be buried in secret desert location

THE body of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will be buried today in a simple ceremony, attended by Muslim clerics, in a secret location in the Libyan desert, an official with the National Transitional Council said yesterday.

“He will be buried in a simple burial with sheikhs attending the burial. It will be an unknown location in the open desert,” the official told Reuters by telephone, adding that the decomposition of the body had reached the point where the “corpse cannot last longer.”

“No agreement was reached for his tribe to take him,” he added. Gaddafi’s son Mo’tassim will be buried in the same ceremony.

Libya’s interim rulers had earlier ended the public display of the bodies of Gaddafi, his son and army chief after four days in which thousands of Libyans came to see for themselves that the dictator was really dead.

Guards locked the gates to the area surrounding the cold storage container where the grim parody of the lying-in-state typically accorded to deceased leaders had been played out.

“That’s enough,” said one of the guards. “He’s been causing us as much trouble dead as he did alive.”

A steady stream of visitors filed in to view the spectacle yesterday before the closure, but far fewer than on previous days when crowds flocked to the container where the three rotting bodies were laid out on mattresses.

There were still a handful disappointed however.

“Can I just bring my son in?” one old man pleaded.

“No, we’re closed,” the guard replied angrily.

Later, fresh guards came on duty and allowed about 100 people to see the bodies then shut the gates.

Fighters guarding the bodies had placed plastic sheeting under them as fluids leaked into the cold store in Misrata, where they had been taken after their capture and killing near Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte last Thursday.

With the door constantly opening to allow a procession of onlookers, the refrigeration unit failed to stop decomposition.

Guards handed out surgical face masks against the stench and had sprayed disinfectant over the corpses overnight.

Gaddafi and his son died after being captured wounded but alive — some of their final moments captured on video.

Libya’s interim leader has ordered an investigation into Gaddafi’s death after strong international pressure. It will aim to determine how he was killed by a bullet to the head after his capture.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said that the National Transitional Council has formed a committee to investigate the killing amid conflicting reports of how Gaddafi died.

Government officials have said initial findings suggest he was killed in the crossfire as the revolutionary forces seized control of his hometown of Sirte.

But Abdul-Jalil raised the possibility that Gaddafi could have been killed by his supporters to prevent him from implicating them in past misdeeds. “Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Gaddafi will not be tried. Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption,” he said.

Meanwhile, 57 bodies, apparently of Gaddafi loyalists, some of whom may have been executed by revolutionary forces, have been discovered in Sirte.

Human Rights Watch said that the discovery “seems part of a trend of killings, looting and other abuses committed by anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law.”