Muammar Gaddafi is dead. The tyrant has been killed at his home town of Sirte when he was overrun by fighters seeking to complete the eight-month uprising, the interim Prime Minister of Libya has announced Thursday 20th October.
Gaddafi died from wounds in his head and legs. It was unclear whether he was hit in a NATO air strike on a convoy fleeing Sirte, a firefight on the ground, or in concrete tunnels in the town itself. Libyan rebels told Al Jazeera that they found him hiding in a tunnel with a pistol in his hand.
The Libyan Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, told a news conference in Tripoli: "We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed."
Earlier, pictures showing what was said to be the body of the dead and bleeding Gaddafi appeared on television as NATO and US officials tried to confirm his death. Some showed it being dragged through the streets of Sirte.
In this article I examine the murderous record of the Gaddafi regime. I would have preferred that he has been taken alive to face justice for his crimes against his own people and the world.
Gaddafi's demise marks the end of a 42 year rule of a dysfunctional brutal regime that ruled by fear, torture and executions. Its mismanagement of the economy brought ruin to Libya and impoverished the Libyan people despite the huge oil and gas wealth.
On the 27th June 2011 The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo asked a three-judge panel to issue arrest warrants for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his second-eldest son, Saif al-Islam, and his intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi.
The regime had brutally attempted to suppress the opposition movement by shelling rebellious cities, and imprisoning and torturing those who speak out.
The filing against Gaddafi came just three months into the uprising against his 42-year rule. Mr. Ocampo presented a 74-page document of evidence to the court in The Hague.
According to Press Report quoting Ocampo, the evidence showed Muammar Gaddafi personally ordered attacks on unarmed civilians. Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam and Abdullah Senussi held meetings to plan the crackdown. Security forces loyal to the government then attacked civilians in their homes, used heavy weaponry on funeral processions, and set up snipers to shoot at people as they left prayers at mosques.
Other reports indicated that thousands of documents showing in chilling detail orders from Muammar Gaddafi's senior generals to bombard and starve the people of Misrata had been gathered by war crimes investigators.
At one stage some three months ago and despite the overwhelming evidence there was every chance that some kind of deal might let Gaddafi slip through unpunished? Every Libyan knows that Gaddafi regime used intimidation, terror and physical extermination of opponents to cling to power.
The dictator was not known for his conciliatory nature, nor was he known for respecting agreements. With his huge cash resources he recruited mercenaries to terrorise the population. He financed assassins, death squads, saboteurs, and mercenaries to carry out reprisals against his opponents. Gaddafi committed crimes against humanity. Hundreds of academics, dissidents and critics were executed in the 1980s and 1990 under the so-called "stray-dogs campaign". Libyans in Europe were targeted and assassinated. University lecturers were executed in front of school children and family members.
The terror campaign was not waged against the Libyan people only.
In 1984 the killers of the British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher remain unpunished. WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot outside the Libyan embassy in London on 17th April 1984.
Agents working for the regime also carried out attacks against Rome and Vienna airports 1985.
In 1986 Berlin Discotheque bombing was carried out by operatives working for the Libyan regime.
The regime supported terrorism against civilian targets around the World. The most infamous example is the 1988 blowing up of Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York over the Scottish village of Lockerbie. Two hundred and fifty-nine passengers and crew were killed along with eleven local residents on the ground. Twenty years later Libya had paid US $ 2billion in compensation to the victims.
The most notorious crime committed by the regime occurred inside Libya itself on 28th June 1996 at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli which housed political prisoners including Islamists. The prisoners had protested about the appalling conditions in the prison and demanded improvements in the living conditions.
When Muammar Gaddafi heard about the protest, he sent his brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi, head of military intelligence to manage the situation. Quoting from Daniel Kawczynski Book "Seeking Gaddafi" "Senussi agreed to meet the prisoners' demand and had a guard held hostage released. The following morning at 7 O'clock, he ordered more than a thousand prisoners to gather in the prison's central courtyard. For four hours, guards posted on rooftops around the courtyard shot at the assembled prisoners. It is said that 1200 men were killed. One can only imagine the bloodshed and terror of that day".
Gaddafi has gone but his henchmen must not be allowed to escape unpunished. It would be a betrayal of the Libyan people and the relatives of the thousands of victims if Gaddafi's henchmen and in particular his brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi are allowed to get away without facing justice to account for their crimes against the Libyan people. The coming hours and days will reveal who of those criminals survived, arrested or escaped. Libya and the world are better off without Muammar Gaddafi.