Muammar Gaddafi’s body has been buried in secret after being displayed in public, in an ignominious end for Libya’s long-time ruler, as the new regime yesterday asked NATO to extend its mission.
The last top figures of his ousted regime, Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, meanwhile, were poised to cross the border into Niger, a Tuareg official said.
Seif al-Islam was “near the Niger border, he hasn’t entered Niger yet but he’s close,” a local official from the northern Niger Agadez region told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A Misurata military council member, also without being named, said that Gaddafi was buried on Monday night in a religious ceremony, along with another of his sons, Mutassim, and former defence minister Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber.
The bodies had been put on display in a market freezer on the outskirts of Misurata, a city 215 kilometres east of Tripoli, with thousands of Libyans queuing up since Friday to view and photograph them.
In Benghazi, a senior official of the National Transitional Council said the burial “took some time” to organise due to a “disconnect between the local (Misurata) council and the NTC.”
According to guards at the entrance to the market, a convoy of four or five military vehicles took the bodies away to an unknown location, being kept secret to avoid the site turning into a rallying point for Gaddafi supporters.
Three Muslim religious figures loyal to the ousted dictator prayed and performed a religious ceremony before the burial, according to the military council member.
The two sons of the former defence minister, brought straight from prison, and his father were present to witness the bodies being picked up from the market, the source said.
The overnight burials come amid raging controversy over the circumstances of Gaddafi’s death after he was taken alive last Thursday during the fall of his hometown Sirte, the last holdout after an eight-month armed revolt.
Libya’s interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Monday that a commission of inquiry is to probe the strongman’s killing after concerns raised by foreign governments and rights group.
“In response to international calls, we have started to put in place a commission tasked with investigating the circumstances of Muammar Gaddafi’s death in the clash with his circle as he was being captured,” Mr Jalil said.
Disquiet has grown internationally over how Gaddafi met his end after NTC fighters hauled him out of a culvert where he was hiding following NATO air strikes on the convoy in which he had been trying to flee his falling hometown.
Mobile phone videos show him still alive at that point. Libya’s interim premier Mahmud Jibril has said an autopsy report showed Gaddafi was killed in “crossfire from both sides.”