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Was Muammar Gaddafi executed in custody? UN rights office wants to know
GENEVA — The United Nations Human Rights office called on Friday for a full investigation into the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and voiced concerns that he may have been executed.
Separate cellphone images showed a wounded and bloodied Gaddafi first alive and then later dead amidst a jostling crowd of anti-Gaddafi fighters after his capture in his hometown of Sirte on Thursday.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about what happened exactly. There seem to be four or five different versions of how he died,” UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters Television in an interview.
“If you take these two videos together, they are rather disturbing because you see someone who has been captured alive and then you see the same person dead.”
ARRESTED ALIVE, KILLED LATER
It is a fundamental principle of international law that people accused of serious crimes should be tried if possible, he said. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in June for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief for crimes against humanity.
“Summary executions are strictly illegal under any circumstances. It’s different if someone is killed in combat. There was a civil war taking place in Libya. So if the person died as part of combat, that is a different issue and that is normally acceptable under the circumstances. But if something else has happened, if someone is captured and then deliberately killed, then that is a very serious matter,” Colville said.
Gaddafi was fatally wounded by a bullet in his intestines following his capture, according to a doctor who examined his body, amid conflicting accounts of how the fugitive former Libyan leader met his end at the end of an eight-month uprising against his 42-year rule.
“Gaddafi was arrested while he was alive but he was killed later. There was a bullet and that was the primary reason for his death, it penetrated his gut,” doctor Ibrahim Tika told Al Arabiya television. “Then there was another bullet in the head that went in and out of his head.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
