Shots, then silence: Is that the moment Gaddafi was killed by a bullet in the head? (2023)

Shots, then silence: Is that the moment Gaddafi was killed by a bullet in the head?

• Despot's last words were, "Do you know what is right and what is wrong?"
• The next clip shows his lifeless body on the ground and with his eyes closed
• "Shot in the chest at close range," says a witness who saw the body
  
• The daughter called the father's mobile phone when he was being held by rebels who said"Old Fuzzhead Is Dead"
• The traditional 24-hour funeral has been delayed as the body lies on the floor of the meat cupboard - but the ruling rebel council says it could now hand the body over to Gaddafi's family
• Still no sign of son Saif after his arms were blown off in a bomb attack
• NATO confirms military operations in Libya will end on October 31
  

VonDaily Mail reporter
Updated: 22 October 2011 at 20:19 GMT

The final moments of Gaddafi's life became clearer today as images emerged of the moment a gun was pressed to his temple.

Seconds later, the stuttering dictator can no longer be heard. The next few scenes show the tyrant's lifeless body on the ground. His eyes are closed and he's not breathing.

Amid reports tonight that the National Transitional Council will deliver the dead dictator's body to members of his extended family, the dramatic footage could clear up some of the mysteries surrounding Gaddafi's death as his widow calls for an inquiry into how her husband died.

The images appear to refute claims by the new Libyan government that the former leader was killed by crossfire on the way to hospital. Instead, they point to a frenzied execution surrounded by taunting rebels.

Scroll down for the video...

Gaddafi is pushed around between a group of rebels while he is slumped on the ground. He is then driven away in a truck.

Gaddafi says on the recording: "What are you doing? It is not allowed in Islamic law. What you are doing is forbidden.

"What you're doing is wrong, boys. Do you know what is right or wrong?'

The young men yell "Muammar, you dog!" as their former leader wipes away blood covering the left side of his head, neck and left shoulder.

Gaddafi motions for the young men to be patient and says, "What's going on?" while wiping fresh blood from his temple and looking at his palm.

Later, a young fighter is shown wearing a boot and yelling, "This is itMuammarthe shoe! That isMuammarthe shoe! Victory! Victory!'

"Keep him alive, keep him alive!" someone screams."This is for Misrata, you dog," a man said, and hit him.

Another rebel shouts, “God is great. God is almighty.' And when Gaddafi begs for mercy, a fighter says: "Shut up, you dog."

Gaddafi was still alive when he was captured, hiding in a gully outside his hometown of Sirte, but had blood running down the side of his face.

Government militants dragged him onto the hood of a Toyota pickup truck with the intention, one of them said, of getting him through the crowd of militants to an ambulance parked about 500 meters away.

In one video, Gaddafi can be heard saying "God forbid this" several times while punches rain down on his head from the crowd.

Misrata, one of the heartlands of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion, suffered months of sieges and artillery shelling from his forces.

Another video shows Gaddafi being hoisted off the hood of the truck and dragged to a car, then pulled down by his hair.

But another man in the crowd lets out a high-pitched hysterical scream. Gaddafi then disappears from view and shots ring out.

Moments later, another video continues showing Gaddafi dead on the ground. He was clearly killed.

The lighting conditions are the same and the same hectic atmosphere can be heard. The same shoes seen in the first shot are also in the second.

Ambulance driver Ali Jaghdoun said Gaddafi was dead when he picked him up and he then drove the body to the city of Misrata. "I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said.

Gaddafi's golden weapon was taken from him. He also had a silver pistol.

Acting Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said today that investigations into who shot Gaddafi are continuing.

He gave his own account of the likely events leading up to the former Libyan leader's death.
He said: "It appears he was involved in a battle between Gaddafi's Qatari Security Brigades and freedom fighters. And he was hiding in some kind of sewer pipe. One of the mercenaries, he is Mauritanian, when he was caught, told the freedom fighters that Gaddafi was hiding in the tube,” Mr Jibril said.

"So they went there and took him out and they took him to this truck to take him to a field hospital.

“On their way, they got caught in the crossfire between the freedom fighters and the security brigades. He was shot in the head. We do not know if he was shot by the freedom fighters or the security brigades.”

His body is currently on display in a meat cabinet next to his dead son Mutassim. However, rebels have shown away part of his skull in an apparent attempt to hide a bullet hole.

Gunshot wounds can be seen on his chest and the top of his left arm. A witness who was able to get close to the body said she could see gunpowder residue around the wounds - often suggesting point-blank shooting. Because of the smell of rotting flesh, visitors to the changing rooms are now being asked to wear masks.

A senior figure among militants in Misrata said he was ashamed of the way a man broke the news of Gaddafi's death to his daughter Aisha, who happened to call him on a mobile phone minutes after he was shot.

"Aisha called and one of the revolutionaries answered her," the commander said. ' He said, 'It's over. Abu Shafshufa died''.'

Using a nickname derived from Gaddafi's characteristic long locks of hair, he said "Old Fuzzhead" was an insult to decency.

Aisha, her mother and two of her brothers fled to Algeria after the fall of Tripoli. Aisha gave birth on the day of her arrival. The government in Algiers angered the NTC by refusing to send them back.

But an Algerian newspaper quoted official sources on Saturday as saying they may now be reconsidering the death of the head of the family.

In a statement from a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi TV channel, the ousted dictator's family demanded the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim and others: "We turn to the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International's Transitional Council force to hand over the bodies of the martyrs to our tribe in Sirte and allow them to conduct their funeral ceremony according to Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.

Colonel Gaddafi's widow yesterday supported international calls for an investigation into his assassination.

But the leaders of the new government refused to hand over the body. "There will be no autopsy today or anywhere else," said Fathi al-Bashaagha, spokesman for the Misrata Military Council. "No one will open their body."

Rebel fighters apparently executed the wounded dictator after capturing him alive.

As celebrations of the 69-year-old tyrant's death continued across Libya, officials at the ruling National Transitional Council were forced to postpone his secret funeral to allow further examination of his battered body.

One of the rebels, who said he took part in the capture, said Gaddafi was shot and wounded at the last minute by one of his own men.

"One of Muammar Gaddafi's guards shot him in the chest," Omran Jouma Shawan said.

Both the United Nations and Amnesty International have called for an inquiry into the death, a call echoed by Gaddafi's widow, Safia, from her exile in neighboring Algeria.

Syrian TV quoted her as calling on the UN to investigate and saying she was proud of the courage her husband and children had shown.

In a statement, the ousted dictator's family demanded the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and others killed on Thursday by militants who overran his hometown of Sirte.

"We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to compel the [national] Transitional Council to hand over the bodies of the martyrs to our tribe in Sirte and allow them to conduct their burial ceremony according to Islamic customs and rules," it says in the statement.

TV reports in Dubai and Jordan yesterday claimed Gaddafi's daughter Aisha called her father's mobile phone after seeing reports in Algeria that he had been captured.

The phone was answered by militants. Aisha yelled at them and called them "rats".

While few mourned the dead, the growing dispute cast a shadow over the celebrations, in which NTC officials and militants shared differing stories. Some denied that Gaddafi had been executed, claiming instead that he was shot dead in a firefight after his arrest.

But an NTC minister in the Libyan capital Tripoli told the Mail yesterday that officials had been saying for weeks that Gaddafi would be shot if he was cornered - a claim at odds with the rebels' official line.

"He took their blood - they had to take his," said the prime minister. "We couldn't have stopped them even if we tried. It was their fault after seeing their brothers killed.”

Rupert Colville, a UN human rights spokesman, said: "There seem to be four or five different versions of how he died.

"When you take these videos together, they're quite disturbing because you see someone captured alive and then you see the same person dead.

The shooting has raised unwelcome questions about the new leadership's ability to control the men-at-arms and has provoked uneasiness among Western allies about respect for justice and human rights among those who claimed to fight only for those ideals.

A series of graphic videos, apparently taken with mobile phones, clearly show how Gaddafi lives after he was pulled from a concrete culvert in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday morning, manhandled by NTC militants and then his body was dragged along a sidewalk.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC promised to explain how Gaddafi was killed.

"They are as transparent about both death itself and the aftermath as I think possible," he said.

“They fought bravely to liberate their country from this dictator. And you know, he met an ignominious end yesterday.”

Gaddafi's son Mutassim, who commanded the defense of Sirte, was also killed after capture.

Yesterday his badly burned body was laid out next to his father's in a makeshift morgue in an old meat shop in the coastal town of Misrata.

"We think it is very important that there is a serious investigation into what caused his death."

Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, reading an autopsy report, said Gaddafi was pulled out of the sewer without resistance, shot in the arm and put in a truck that was "caught in the crossfire" while taking him to the hospital.

dr Ibrahim Tika, who examined the bodies in Misrata yesterday, said: "There was a bullet and that was the main reason for his death, it entered his intestines. . . then there was another bullet going in and out of his head.'

The medical evidence appears to support claims by militants involved in Gaddafi's capture, who said immediately afterwards that he was shot in the stomach.

UN officials said an investigation must look into the "wealth" of video footage showing a crowd of militants pushing and dragging the bald-headed Gaddafi, spattering blood on his face and soaking his shirt after he was pulled from the pipe.

Gaddafi could be seen fighting them, tripping and screaming as the fighters pushed him onto the hood of a truck. A fighter held him down and pressed his thigh with a pair of shoes to show his contempt.

Fighters propped him up on the hood for a few moments, apparently to show him around as a winner.

"We want him alive," shouted a man, before Gaddafi was pulled from the hood, some militants pulling his hair to an ambulance.

The controversy delayed the funeral, which according to Islamic custom is to take place within 24 hours of the death.

Ghouls capture history on a camera phone

For 42 years, his picture adorned virtually every propaganda billboard in Libya.

Yesterday, young Libyans queued for one last chilling picture of Colonel Gaddafi's bloated, blood-smeared body.

Grinning teenagers crouched next to the greyed corpse and posed for photos, many raising their hands in the "victory" symbol. The photos have already been sent around the world on social networking sites.

The young men who posed for the bizarre images have never known a Libya without Gaddafi and have grown up surrounded by huge propaganda images of the "brother leader".

They became the driving force behind the revolution, many of them taking up arms after learning about the broader Arab Spring via social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Yesterday they faced the ultimate symbol of this revolution, the battered, bloodstained corpse of the deposed tyrant.

Gaddafi's body was taken to the coastal city of Misrata, the scene of some of the fiercest opposition to the Gaddafi regime.

The body, stripped to the waist, was placed on a plastic-wrapped yellow mattress at what was once a meat store, which is now a room-sized commercial freezer in a mall.

Gunshot wounds were clearly visible on his temple and stomach, and deep scratches were etched on his chest - markings of his violent end by a lynch mob in his birthplace, Sirte.

Rebel commander Adull-Salam Eleiwa said Gaddafi's remains would be treated with respect and buried as soon as possible.

The Libyan authorities must agree on a secret location for Gaddafi's tomb so that it does not become a rallying point for his supporters.

The death effectively ended the NATO operation in Libya. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said yesterday the Western alliance had made a tentative decision to end Operation Unified Protector on October 31.

Like other Western officials, Rasmussen publicly expressed no regrets over the horrid death of the toppled Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by National Transitional Council forces but taken dead to a hospital.

"We performed a complex operation at unprecedented speed and performed with the utmost care," Rasmussen said. "I am very proud of what we have achieved."

Air patrols are set to continue over the next 10 days over Libya as a "precautionary measure" to ensure the stability of the new regime.

They will be gradually reduced over the coming days if there are no further battles with forces loyal to the deposed dictator.