Should Libyans care how Muammar Gaddafi died? As the debate continues over whether rebel fighters executed Gaddafi after capturing him ? in violation of international rules of war ? the issue has raised stark differences between Libya's new leaders, who suffered for decades under a suffocating dictatorship, and the views of some of their closest Western allies.
In numerous interviews over the weekend in Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi, not a single Libyan ? including top officials of the new regime ? expressed serious concern that Gaddafi might have been executed after being captured alive. Instead, the general feeling might best be summed up by Colonel Omar Hariri, a war hero, who had been a comrade-in-arms of Gaddafi during their coup in 1969, and who headed this year's rebel military forces in eastern Libya. As Hariri greeted fighters returning to Benghazi from the front in Gaddafi's birthplace of Sirt on Saturday, TIME asked him if he was concerned about how Gaddafi had died. "I don't care, so long as he's dead," he said. In a separate interview on Sunday, the interim Finance and Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni ? who told TIME he has been asked to be the new interim Prime Minister ? said he felt "relieved" that Gaddafi had been killed. (See how the rebels are struggling to remake Libya from scratch.)
The great majority of Libyans are rejoicing his death too. Libyans have emerged from a very long nightmare, in which two generations lived in terror under Gaddafi's dictatorship. The details of how he met his end seem irrelevant to most of them. In death, Gaddafi has become an object of ridicule, as though he were just a pathetic old man, rather than their omnipotent ruler. The walls in Benghazi and Tripoli, which for years were plastered with portraits of Gaddafi as the untouchable leader, are filled with graffiti portraying him as a bushy-haired clown. And thousands of people have lined up to view Gaddafi's bloodied and beaten corpse, which has been laid out since Friday in the cold-storage room of a food market in Misratah, about 150 miles (240 km) east of Tripoli.
No one doubts the terrifying brutality of Gaddafi's rule, which put thousands of political foes on death row with perfunctory trials. Yet on Sunday, Western officials nonetheless said they were unhappy with what they had heard of the way he died. British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond told the BBC that the rebels' reputation had been "a little bit stained" by Gaddafi's death. And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ? who visited Tripoli two days before Gaddafi was killed ? told NBC's Meet the Press that she supported the U.N.'s call to investigate how he died. (See pictures of Gaddafi's bizarre clothes.)
On Sunday morning Libya's chief pathologist, Dr. Othman al-Zintani, confirmed in an autopsy that Gaddafi had died from a gunshot to his head. But he told reporters he would not publish the autopsy report. Zintani said it would be delivered to Libya's attorney general. That seemed to contradict assurances from interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril on Thursday, when he told reporters he would make public all the details of Gaddafi's death as soon as the autopsy was completed.
Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam were indicted earlier this year by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague for crimes against humanity, for having allegedly ordered their forces to kill unarmed demonstrators in eastern Libya in February, before the rebels took up arms. For months, rebel leaders assured Western governments that they intended to put the Gaddafis on trial, but had stressed that they would prefer to try him in a Libyan court, rather than transfer him to the ICC.
See the top 15 toppled dictators.
On Thursday those legal questions vanished, when Gaddafi was found cowering in a sewage ditch in his birthplace of Sirt. On cell-phone video posted on YouTube and then broadcast worldwide, Gaddafi is seen to be captured alive, surrounded by enraged Libyans hitting him. He then appears to have been dragged to a vehicle and driven away. Jibril told TIME in an interview that evening that Gaddafi was accidentally caught in a fierce firefight between his supporters and fighters of the new regime. "There was cross fire and he was shot while they were carrying him to a truck," he said. Clearly wearying of the ongoing questions, Jibril repeated that version on Sunday to reporters in Jordan, where he has been attending a World Economic Forum meeting. "Have you seen a video of somebody killing him?" he said. "I haven't seen any videotape or mobile film that shows somebody is killing Gaddafi."
On the new Libyan television channel Al-Hurra on Saturday evening, two of those who captured Gaddafi gave lengthy accounts of the incident, sticking closely to the official version, as told by Jibril. Clearly overcome with the recollection, one of the young fighters said, "Nobody could believe that he was in there when we got inside" the sewage ditch. "He got out of the sewer like a rat crawling. There was blood all over him, but I didn't focus where it was coming from," he said, adding several times that he felt still "in shock" at the extraordinary moment of having captured the dictator. "It was the first time I had ever seen Gaddafi, and I had my hands on his body, and in that terrible condition." (Watch TIME's 2009 interview with Muammar Gaddafi.)
For many Libyans, the ongoing debate over Gaddafi's death is downright mystifying. Indeed, many are proud of the fighters for having killed Gaddafi ? just reward, they believe, for the hell through which he put them. "He was killed by the revolutionaries, they captured him alive and they killed him," says Ali Ahmed, 21, a business-administration student at the University of Benghazi, who has spent much of the past eight months as a rebel journalist in this city. "I didn't feel sorry," he says, adding, "The idea of human rights is still new in Libya. My friends from America are trying to explain human rights," he says. "They have shown me a copy of the Bill of Rights."
Meanwhile, the country is moving on. The National Transitional Council (NTC) ? which has run Libya since the rebels stormed into Tripoli and drove Gaddafi from power in August ? on Sunday declared the country liberated in a giant public ceremony in Benghazi, Libya's second biggest city, where the revolt erupted in February. But even as the city's huge square filled with hundreds of thousands of people, the leaders of the NTC ? rebels no more ? were still holed up in their makeshift quarters in a hotel, scrambling to put together a new interim government. The current council will formally disband within the next few days. Tarhouni, who until February was an economics professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, told TIME he has not yet decided whether to accept the position of Prime Minister, which would last for eight months, until a national council is formed to draft a new constitution and organize the first democratic elections. "It's a huge responsibility," says Tarhouni, admitting that he feels exhausted from the eight-month war.
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