Family demands Gaddafi body; Nato ends war

Nato called an end to its air war in Libya, and the clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.
 
In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.

"We call on the UN, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the [National] Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.

At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday, Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.

Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.

"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."

The Nato operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.

Declaration today

Libya is to declare its bitter eight-month civil war against Muammar Gaddafi's 42 years of eccentric one-man rule over on Sunday and embark on building a democracy with the country's first free elections next year. 

Tens of thousands are expected to pack into the central square in the second city Benghazi, the cradle of the uprising against Gaddafi, to witness interim government leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil announce the "liberation" of Libya.  

With huge oil and gas resources and a relatively small population of some six million, Libya has the potential to become a prosperous country, but regional and tribal rivalries fostered by Gaddafi could erupt into yet more violence. 

Libya's new leaders have a "very limited opportunity" to put aside their differences, said interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril as he announced he was stepping down on Saturday. 

Jibril said progress for Libya would need great resolution, both by interim leaders on the National Transitional Council and by six million war-weary people: "First," he said, "What kind of resolve the NTC will show in the next few days? 

"And the other thing depends mainly on the Libyan people - whether they differentiate between the past and the future." 

He added: "I am counting on them to look ahead and remember the kind of agony they went through in the last 42 years.  

New democracy

There is some unease abroad over what many believe was a summary execution and UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has called for an investigation into the killing, but very few Libyans share any of those concerns.  

Arguments have arisen though between Libya's factions about what to do with the corpse which has not been accorded the swift burial required by Islamic law and is already beginning to decompose. Those viewing the body on Saturday were obliged to cover their faces with surgical masks. 

Gaddafi's surviving family, in exile, want his body and that of his son Mo'tassim 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 it under its soil. 

The disputes within the NTC have delayed the announcement of an end to the war several times. 

But such worries are unlikely to be paramount in the minds of many Libyans on Sunday as they celebrate the beginning of a new era in their country's history.  It will set a clock ticking on a plan for a new government and constitutional assembly leading to full democracy in 2013. 

"We hope we will have an elected democratic government with broad participation," said student Ali Abu Shufa.

Gaddafi was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has since seen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them to respect his rights.

NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gaddafi was already dead when he picked up the body.

"I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said, in testimony that adds greater weight to the widespread assumption that Gaddafi was lynched.

The U.N. human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarily executed. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.

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