'Autopsy performed'
A post-mortem examination on the body of Libya's ex-leader Muammar Gaddafi has been performed in Misrata, an official told the BBC.
He said the body would be handed over to relatives. The burial has been delayed, with officials divided about what to do with the body.
The US has called on Libya's new authorities to give a full account of Col Gaddafi's death in an "open and transparent manner".
Also, the strongman's widow has backed international demands yesterday for an inquiry into his killing, reports The Dailymail.
In a statement, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mutassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.
“We call on the UN, OIC and Amnesty International to force the [National] Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules,” the statement said.
TV reports in Dubai and Jordan claimed yesterday that 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 fighters. Aisha screamed at them and called them “rats”.
NTC is expected to formally announce the liberation of the country during the weekend.
The military leadership in Misrata stored Gaddafi's body in a vegetable market freezer overnight and put it on display for hundreds of curious onlookers yesterday.
The bloodied corpse has become a gruesome tourist attraction and a macabre symbol of the new Libya's problems. Hundreds of ordinary Libyans have queued to see the dead dictator.
Bashaagha said that the new regime's military commander for the capital, Abdelhakim Belhaj, was expected to travel to Misrata later yesterday to view the corpse of the man who ruled Libya with an iron rod for 42 years.
But he said there were no immediate plans for National Transitional Council chief Abdel Jalil to visit.
"Abdel Jajil did not come yesterday and is not coming today, and for the moment it is not expected that he will come."
The interim leader was in the main eastern city of Benghazi yesterday visiting some of the wounded from the eight-month uprising that felled Gaddafi.
"Yes," he answered when asked if the circumstances of Gaddafi's death were being investigated. He declined to take any further questions.
US President Barack Obama said yesterday that "In Libya, the death of Moamer Gaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do," he said.
But questions remain over how Gaddafi met his end after NTC fighters hauled him out of a culvert where he was hiding following Nato air strikes on the convoy in which he had been trying to flee his falling hometown.
Mobile phone videos show him still alive at that point.
Footage shows the former dictator, his face half-covered in blood, being dragged towards a vehicle by a delirious crowd and forced on to the bonnet.
Those at the front push and shake him, pull him by the hair and hit him. At one point he appears to be trying to speak.
Subsequent footage shows him being hauled off the vehicle, still alive, and hustled through the screaming crowd, before he disappears in the crush and the crackle of gunfire can be heard.
NTC leaders are adamant he was shot in the head when he was caught "in crossfire" between his supporters and new regime fighters soon after his capture.
But in a video circulating on the Internet, a young fighter from Benghazi claims he shot Gaddafi twice after capturing him -- once under the arm and once in the head. He says he died half an hour later.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the "way his death happened poses an entire number of questions," and called for a probe.
"The images we saw on television show that he was taken prisoner while wounded, and then later, once already a prisoner, his life was taken away."
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC "has already been working to determine the precise cause and circumstances of Kadhafi's death, and we obviously urge them to do so in an open and transparent manner as we move forward."
Toner repeated a US call to the NTC to treat prisoners humanely.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay also called for an investigation.
"On the issue of Kadhafi's death yesterday, the circumstances are still unclear," her spokesman Rupert Colville said. "There should be some kind of investigation given what we saw yesterday."
Claudio Cordone, senior director at Amnesty International, said that if Gaddafi "was killed after his capture, it would constitute a war crime and those responsible should be brought to justice."
He said the "NTC must apply the same standards to all, affording justice even to those who categorically denied it to others."
Libya's wanted former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, meanwhile, surfaced in neighbouring Niger after apparently fleeing through the desert following the fall of the oasis town of Bani Walid on Monday in the penultimate battle of the conflict.
"The presence of Abdullah al-Senussi has been indicated in the far north of Niger," near the border with Libya, a government source in the capital Niamey told AFP yesterday.
"It's a report that we have but our defence and security forces have not yet intercepted him," the source said. "So his presence in Niger is not yet officially established."
Senussi was wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of "crimes against humanity," along with Gaddafi himself and the latter's son and longtime heir apparent Seif al-Islam.
Seif al-Islam too remains at large. NTC officials said that he too may have fled to Niger.
At a World Economic Forum in Jordan, Libya's Interim Prime Minister Mahmud Jibril warned yesterday that rebuilding his war-battered country would amount to a "Mission Impossible" task.
"Rebuilding Libya will not be an easy task. It is Mission Impossible of Tom Cruise," Jibril said, referring to the Hollywood star's movie.
Comments