The body of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was buried Tuesday, October 25, in a secret place in the desert.
“The process leading to his burial is taking place now,” National Transitional Council (NTC) official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters by telephone from Libya.
“Only two trusted people were assigned to this secret mission. These are not guards, but very trusted NTC people.”
The bodies of Gaddafi’s son Mo’atassim and his defense minister Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber were also buried.
Funeral prayers were performed on Gaddafi and his son by Gaddafi’s personal imam Khaled Tantoush, who was arrested with him, before they were removed from the Misrata compound where Libyans had filed past their ex-strongman sprawled on a mattress in what became a grim parody of the lying-in-state ceremony.
The last Muslim rites were also attended by two of Gaddafi’s cousins, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, once leader of the feared People’s Guard, and Ahmed Ibrahim, who were both captured with Gaddafi after their convoy was attacked in a NATO air strike near Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, just after it had fallen.
“The NTC officials were handed the body after the sheikh completed the early morning ceremony and are taking him somewhere very far away into the desert,” Mlegta said, without saying where.
“Trust me, it takes time and the burial will take place far away from the media.”
Gaddafi was killed Thursday, October 19, shortly after he was captured by National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters in his hometown of Sirte.
Images filmed on mobile phones before and after Gaddafi’s death showed him wounded and bloodied but clearly alive after his capture in Sirte.
Other videos showed the former leader dead amidst a jostling crowd of anti-Gaddafi fighters.
Bargaining Chip
Many Libyans feel happy about Gaddafi’s death.
“I wish I killed him myself. But they took this wish away from me,” Abdul Mufta Saleh Omemi, 45, told the Washington Post.
“As a Muslim, I’m not supposed to kill. But he forced us to do it. I’m very, very happy.”
More than 50,000 people are believed to have been killed in the 8-month uprising against Gaddafi.
The NTC leadership appears to have decided that an anonymous grave would at least ensure the plot did not become a shrine.
An NTC official had told Reuters several days ago that officials entrusted with the burial would all have to swear on the Qur’an never to reveal its location.
Under pressure from Western allies, the NTC promised on Monday to investigate how Gaddafi and his son were killed.
But NTC spokesman Jalal al-Gallal acknowledged Tuesday that “there is no particular mechanism” for an investigation.
Gaddafi’s killing ended eight months of war, finally ending a nervous two-month hiatus since the NTC’s motley forces overran the capital Tripoli.
But it also threatened to lay bare the regional and tribal rivalries that present the NTC with its biggest challenge.
At times, Gaddafi’s body appeared to have become a macabre bargaining chip for Libya’s long besieged city of Misrata, whose war leaders want a bigger say in the peace.
NTC officials had spoken of talks with Gaddafi’s tribal kinsmen from Sirte and within the interim leadership over where and how to dispose of the body, and on what Misrata leaders in possession of the corpse might get in return for cooperation.
Source: OnIslam
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