Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi came to power in a coup in 1969 before he was ousted in 2011. Although some believed that his leadership brought a lot of socio-economic reforms to the country, others accused him of being a dictator who controlled with an iron fist.
On October 20, 2011, he was deposed ten years ago following an international military intervention led by France, the United States, and Britain. The revolutionary and politician was caught up by rebels at his hiding and later slain. Anti-government protests had begun in Libya in February 2011, eight months before he was slain. The protests, inspired by the successful upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, later degenerated into civil war as forces loyal to Gaddafi clashed with armed opposition groups.
On August 28, 2011, Gaddafi and two of his sons escaped the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as it began to fall to rebels amid the battle. But Khamis, one of the sons of the Libyan leader, was murdered within a day by what was believed to be a NATO attack. Another son of Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam, managed to make it to the town of Bani Walid, but that town quickly succumbed to rebels. Finally, Gaddafi fled to the Libyan beach city of Sirte, his hometown.
A report by Human Rights Watch cited by The Washington Post, which looked at the Libyan leader’s movement over his last days based largely on account of loyalist fighters, said Gaddafi arrived in Sirte with a personal driver, a small contingent of bodyguards, and a state security official named Mansour Zhao. Then, Gaddafi proceeded into the apartment complexes in the little downtown area, where he met with two officers of his administration to discuss the ongoing civil conflict. One of these two officials was Gaddafi’s son Mutassim. He would visit his father regularly while commanding Sirte’s defenses.
As rebels reached Sirte and violence progressed into the city center, Gaddafi opted to withdraw to a more sparsely populated suburb at the western end of town, according to the source.
“Bunkered down and fearful of exposing themselves, Gaddafi and his bodyguards went between abandoned dwellings, seeking to find a stable source of food. The long-time tyrant, who had siphoned off billions of dollars of oil money for his personal use, and his guards scrounged through the cupboards of abandoned residences for pasta and rice. Many of the water tanks had been destroyed in fighting, making drinking water difficult to find,” The Washington Post noted.
Gaddafi, for weeks, spent most of his time reading the Koran and praying. “There was no communication, no television, nothing,” Dhao, the security official, later told Human Rights Watch, adding that they had a satellite phone which they used to call people who had access to a television to know what was in the news.
“We had no tasks, we were just between sleeping and being awake,” Dhao said. He added out of worry that their whereabouts would be discovered, they moved every four or five days. And they utilized only one or two cars when moving. It could be that those cars were all they had or probably they did not want to be noticed. As they continued to travel, Gaddafi changed, “becoming more and more angry”, Dhao remembered.
“Mostly he was unhappy over the absence of energy, communications and television, his inability to communicate to the outside world. We would go see him and sit with him for an hour or so to converse with him, and he would question, ‘Why is there no electricity? Why is there no water?’”
On October 19, Mutassim told his father that he had a plan. He said they will depart Sirte, “breaking through the line of rebels laying siege to the city.” Gaddafi agreed, and they started organizing the caravan. The Libyan leader’s bodyguards carried some residents and the wounded into a caravan of around 50 cars, which were largely four-by-four pickups. They also filled the cars with weaponry, including machine guns.
The goal was to set off at 3:30 or 4 a.m., but they kept long organizing the convoy and left at 8 a.m. By this time, numerous rebel groups had returned to their positions, and the “flat desert plain was brightly lit,” according to The Washington Post. The National Transition Council forces had also extended their grasp on Sirte.
As Gaddafi and his party tried to depart Sirte, rebels immediately came up to the convoy. Not too long after, a missile landed next to Gaddafi’s car. Dhao was injured from the explosion. As the convoy completed the route, they ran with rebel militiamen from Misurata. The convoy started firing at the rebels. At this point, NATO fighter jets dropped two “PAVEWAY” laser-guided bombs, every 500 pounds, destroying around a dozen cars as the munitions-loaded trucks caught fire. The strike dispersed the convoy into several groups.
Gaddafi and a personal bodyguard contingent and his son Mutassim and his defense minister jumped from their vehicles and escaped on foot into an abandoned home. Rebels followed them.
“We found Moammar [Mummar] there, wearing a helmet and a bullet-proof vest. He had a handgun in his pocket and was carrying an automatic weapon,” the defense minister’s son recounted. Mutassim was soon captured and killed as he tried to get his father and the team to safety.
“Then the villa started being shelled so we ran out of there,” the defense minister’s son recalled. “There were a lot of cement construction blocks outside and we hid among those, with the families and the guards.”
Gaddafi and some 10 others ran to a drainage pipe nearby that ran under the road. According to the Human Rights Watch report, they crawled through it, but rebels found them when they emerged. One of Gaddafi’s bodyguards tried to throw grenades at the rebels, but one of the grenades bounced off a concrete wall and landed near Gaddafi. “The bodyguard leaned over to retrieve the grenade when it exploded, taking off his arm and wounding both Gaddafi and the defense minister,” The Washington Post reported.
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Gaddafi started bleeding from a head wound and was soon rounded up by rebels who started beating him. He was even stabbed in the anus with a bayonet. “It was a violent scene, he was put on the front of a pickup truck that tried to drive him away, and he fell off,” a rebel commander told Human Rights Watch. “We understood that there needed to be a trial, but we couldn’t control everyone, some acted beyond our control.”
It remains unknown what happened next. Human Rights Watch said a phone video of the scene seemed to show “Gaddafi’s nearly naked and apparently lifeless body being loaded into an ambulance, suggesting that he may have been dead by the time he left his area of capture.” After two hours, the ambulance arrived in Misurata, and bloody images of Gaddafi’s corpse were soon shared across the world.
To date, it is not known who killed Gaddafi. It could be that he died from the mob beating or that his injuries, including the grenade explosion, may have claimed his life. It could also be that he was killed before being placed into the ambulance or, moments after, before arriving in Misurata.
“Some militia fighters from Benghazi claim to have shot Gaddafi dead during a dispute with Misurata fighters about where to take him, but their claims remain unconfirmed,” according to the Human Rights Watch report cited by The Washington Post.
