THE HOUR GADHAFI WAS DEAD
MANILA, OCTOBER
22, 2011 (STAR) By AP SIRTE, Libya – Dragged from hiding
in a drainage pipe, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged
revolutionary fighters: "Don't shoot, don't kill me, my sons."
Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented
decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator's hair and parading his
bloodied body on the hood of a truck.
The death Thursday of Gadhafi, two months after he was driven from power and
into hiding, decisively buries the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the
oil-rich country into an international pariah and his own personal fiefdom.
It also thrusts Libya into a new age in which its transitional leaders must
overcome deep divisions and rebuild nearly all its institutions from scratch to
achieve dreams of democracy.
"We have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. Moammar
Gadhafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said in the capital of
Tripoli. "I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the grudges and only say
one word, which is Libya, Libya, Libya."
[PHOTO OF GADHAFI'S DEAD BODY. COURTESY OF AP]
President Barack Obama told the Libyan people: "You have won your
revolution."
Although the US briefly led the relentless NATO bombing campaign that sealed
Gadhafi's fate, Washington later took a secondary role to its allies. Britain
and France said they hoped that his death would lead to a more democratic Libya.
Also killed in the city was one of his feared sons, Muatassim, while another
son – one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam – was wounded and captured. A foreign
correspondent saw cigarette burns on Muatassim's body.
Death of a tyrant
Bloody images of Gadhafi's last moments raised questions over how exactly he
died after he was captured, wounded but alive.
Video on Arab television stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and
pulling the goateed, balding Gadhafi, with blood splattered on his face and
soaking his shirt.
Gadhafi struggled against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters pushed
him onto the hood of a pickup truck. One fighter held him down, pressing on his
thigh with a pair of shoes in a show of contempt.
Fighters propped him on the hood as they drove for several moments,
apparently to parade him around in victory.
"We want him alive. We want him alive," one man shouted before Gadhafi was
dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.
Later footage showed fighters rolling Gadhafi's lifeless body over on the
pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head. His body was
then paraded on a car through Misrata, a nearby city that suffered a brutal
siege by regime forces during the eight-month civil war.
Crowds in the streets cheered, "The blood of martyrs will not go in vain."
Thunderous celebratory gunfire and cries of "God is great" rang out across
Tripoli well past midnight, leaving the smell of sulfur in the air. People
wrapped revolutionary flags around toddlers and flashed V for victory signs as
they leaned out car windows. Martyrs' Square, the former Green Square from which
Gadhafi made many defiant speeches, was packed with revelers.
In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks
of fighting by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives
and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.
The outpouring of joy reflected the deep hatred of a leader who had brutally
warped Libya with his idiosyncratic rule.
Day of reckoning
The day began with revolutionary forces bearing down on the last of Gadhafi's
heavily armed loyalists who in recent days had been squeezed into a block of
buildings of about 700 square yards.
A large convoy of vehicles moved out of the buildings, and revolutionary
forces moved to intercept it, said Fathi Bashagha, spokesman for the Misrata
Military Council, which commanded the fighters who captured him.
At 8:30 a.m., NATO warplanes struck the convoy, a hit that stopped it from
escaping, according to French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet.
Fighters then clashed with loyalists in the convoy for three hours, with
rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns. Members of
the convoy got out of the vehicles, Bashagha said.
Gadhafi and other supporters fled on foot, with fighters in pursuit, he said.
A Gadhafi bodyguard captured as they ran away gave a similar account to Arab TV
stations.
Gadhafi and several bodyguards took refuge in a drainage pipe under a highway
nearby. After clashes ensued, he emerged, telling the fighters outside, "What do
you want? Don't kill me, my sons," according to Bashagha and Hassan Doua, a
fighter who was among those who captured him.
Bashagha said Gadhafi died in the ambulance from wounds suffered during the
clashes. Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the
ambulance during the 120-mile drive to Misrata, said Gadhafi died from two
bullet wounds – to the head and chest.
Domino effect
The TV images of Gadhafi's bloodied body sent ripples across the Arab world
and on social networks such as Twitter.
Many wondered whether a similar fate awaits Syria's Bashar Assad and Yemen's
Ali Abdullah Saleh, two leaders clinging to power in the face of long-running
Arab Spring uprisings.
For the millions of Arabs yearning for freedom, democracy and new leadership,
the death of one of the region's most brutal dictators will likely inspire and
invigorate the movement for change.
As word spread of Gadhafi's death, jubilant Libyans poured into Tripoli's
central Martyr's Square, chanting "Syria! Syria!" – urging the Syrian opposition
on to victory.
"This will signal the death of the idea that Arab leaders are invincible,"
said Egyptian activist and blogger Hossam Hamalawi. "Mubarak is in a cage, Ben
Ali ran away, and now Gadhafi killed. All this will bring down the red line that
we can't get these guys."
Thursday's final blows to the Gadhafi regime allow Libya's interim
leadership, the National Transitional Council (NTC), to declare the entire
country liberated.
It rules out a scenario some had feared – that Gadhafi might flee into
Libya's southern deserts and lead a resistance campaign.
Following the fall of Tripoli on Aug. 21, Gadhafi loyalists mounted fierce
resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing the new leadership from
declaring full victory. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control
of one stronghold, Bani Walid.
Tales of a dictator
After seizing power in a 1969 coup that toppled the monarchy, Gadhafi created
a "revolutionary" system of "rule by the masses," which supposedly meant every
citizen participated in government but really meant all power was in his hands.
He wielded it erratically, imposing random rules while crushing opponents,
often hanging anyone who plotted against him in public squares.
Abroad, Gadhafi posed as a Third World leader, while funding militants,
terror groups and guerrilla armies. His regime was blamed in the 1988 bombing of
Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and the downing of a French passenger
jet in Africa the following year, as well as the 1986 bombing of a German
discotheque frequented by US servicemen that killed three people.
Families of the US victims of the Lockerbie bombing applauded the Libyan
people, but urged Libya's new leaders to bring the other perpetrators to
justice.
The NTC will declare liberation on Saturday, Mohamed Sayeh, a senior council
member, said. That begins a key timetable toward creating a new system: The NTC
has always said it will form a new interim government within a month of
liberation and will hold elections within eight months.
But the revolutionary forces are an unruly mix of militias from Libya's major
cities, and already differences have emerged between them. Revolutionaries from
Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi – Libya's second-largest city that has served as
the rebel capital during the civil war – have exchanged accusations that each is
trying to dominate the new rule.
Also, Islamic fundamentalists have taken an increasingly prominent role,
pushing for some form of Islamic state in Libya, causing friction with more
secular leaders.
"Libyans aim for multiparty politics, justice, democracy and freedom," said
Libyan Defense Minister Jalal al-Degheili. "The end of Gadhafi is not the aim,
we say the minor struggle is over. The bigger struggle is now coming. This will
not happen unless all the Libyan people are united."
FROM THE DAILY INQUIRER
Condoleezza Rice recounts Gadhafi's 'eerie'
obsession Agence France-Presse 5:52 am | Friday, October 21st, 2011
WASHINGTON—Colonel Moammar Gadhafi had a "slightly eerie obsession"
with Condoleezza Rice (photo), describing her as his "African Princess," the
ex-US secretary of state said in an excerpt from her memoirs published Thursday.
The late Libyan leader met Rice in the oil-rich north African country in
September 2008, a historic meeting that signaled the once pariah state's return
to the diplomatic table after decades of isolation.
Rice, unlike ex-British prime minister Tony Blair, declined to meet Gadhafi
in his infamous tent, opting instead to hold talks in his residence.
"Obviously, the first visit by a US secretary of state since 1953 would be a
major milestone on the country's path to international acceptability," wrote
Rice in her book, "No Higher Honor," published online by The Daily Beast.
"But Gadhafi also had a slightly eerie fascination with me personally, asking
visitors why his 'African princess,' wouldn't visit him."
Rice, who served under president George W. Bush, said she had been warned
ahead of the meeting to ignore the Libyan leader's "crazy" behavior as he would
eventually "get back on track." But her suspicions were soon confirmed.
"He suddenly stopped speaking and began rolling his head back and forth.
'Tell President Bush to stop talking about a two-state solution for Israel and
Palestine!' he barked. 'It should be one state! Israeltine!'" Rice recalled.
"Perhaps he didn't like what I said next. In a sudden fit, he fired two
translators in the room. 'Okay.' I thought, 'this is Gadhafi.'"
Rice's meeting with Gadhafi — once described by former US president
Ronald Reagan as a "mad dog" — took place in Bab al Azizia, a Tripoli residence
which was hit in US bombing raids ordered by Reagan in 1986.
It was there that the Libyan leader insisted Rice join him for dinner in his
private kitchen, where he later presented her with a collection of photos of the
US diplomat's meetings with world leaders — set to the music of a song called
"Black Flower in the White House," written for Rice by a Libyan composer.
"It was weird, but at least it wasn't raunchy," Rice said of the episode.
The talks were dominated by Gadhafi's decision to give up his weapons of mass
destruction in 2003, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the need
to secure a financial settlement for families of victims killed in the bombing
by Libyan agents of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
"There was a clear diplomatic quid pro quo: in exchange, we'd help them to
return to good standing in the international community. But it would not be easy
and not only because of Gadhafi's long record of brutality," Rice said.
Libya did return to the international fold but the "Arab Spring" of 2011
would have consequences that, according to Rice, Gadhafi had not fully
anticipated.
"I came away from the visit realizing how much Gadhafi lives inside his own
head," Rice wrote.
"I wondered if he even fully understood fully what was going on around him.
And I was very, very glad that we had disarmed him of his most dangerous weapons
of mass destruction. There in his bunker, making his last stand, I have no doubt
he would have used them," the former secretary of state said.
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