GADDAFI: GlobalPost videos, photos, dispatches
Celebrations in Tripoli after reports claimed Muammar Gaddafi had been captured and killed in Sirte on Thursday.
GLOBALPOST'S GADDAFI COVERAGE HIGHLIGHTS:
A frame-by-frame breakdown of a video obtained by GlobalPost taken shortly after Gaddafi's capture shows the former Libyan dictator sodomized by a fighter. Warning: extremely graphic.
GlobalPost readers discuss if the video should be shown.
GlobalPost's Libya correspondent Tracey Shelton has this video on the fighters who found Gaddafi.
After caught, Gaddafi reportedly said: "What do you want? What did I do to you, my sons?"
GlobalPost's Libya correspondent Tracey Shelton looks at whether Gaddafi was executed in Libya.
The official line on the day the dictator died was that he suffered fatal wounds during a gun battle in Sirte, his hometown. He died in a crossfire, the National Transitional Council, or NTC, announced. But as cell phone videos quickly began to emerge, so did questions.
Now, a rebel soldier who was at the scene, says that he witnessed Gaddafi's execution.
GlobalPost's Emily Lodish looks at what's going on with all the cell phone footage of Gaddafi's death. She writes that citizen journalism is nothing new, but the bevy of videos available on Gaddafi, and the speed with which they began circulating the web Thursday marks a significant shift.
How could you doubt the infamous Libyan leader had fallen when, whether you liked it or not, a peek at your laptop meant you were staring at a graphic cell-phone video of his bloodied face?
The answer is you couldn't. It was right there, in your face and in the flesh. Libyans with their cell phones were all over it.
GlobalPost's Solana Pyne looks in detail at the footage obtained by Libya correspondents Tracey Shelton and James Foley of the moments before Gaddafi's death. The video, Pyne says, seems to suggest the former Libyan dictator died at the hands of his captors.
GlobalPost's David Case looks at Gaddafi's death and asks if war crimes were committed.
“There’s clearly blood on him” early in the video, notes Fred Abrahams, Special Advisor to Human Rights Watch, an expert in armed conflict fact-finding. “The question is, did he die of wounds inflicted before or after capture.”
“If Gaddafi was executed in captivity and that goes unpunished, it sends a message that Libyans can take justice into their own hands,” notes Abrahams. “Whether they’re senior officials, security officials or the neighborhood spy, people who committed crimes over the four decades should be tried in a court, and not lynched by their neighbors.”
The Geneva Conventions ban killing captives while in detention. GlobalPost asks its readers if killing Gaddafi was therefore wrong. Here is a collection of the best responses on Twitter and Facebook.
KC Compton wrote on Facebook:
Yep. If anyone deserved it, he did. But the rule of law is sometimes directly opposed to our deepest desires — and that's why it matters so much that we honor it, whatever our country, whenever we possibly can.
GlobalPost correspondent in Libya Tracey Shelton writes that the people of Libya are spending Friday celebrating the death of Gaddafi. However, public opinion in the country is split as to whether his death — rather than capture — was the best outcome.
Many, like Lufty Alamin, a prominent freedom fighter, feel his death was the only way to close the chapter and allow Libya to move on from the atrocities of the past. Fears that a lengthy trial would spur continued support from Gaddafi loyalists, possibly drawing out the conflict for years to come, were high.
“If you cut off the head the whole body will fall,” Alamin said after returning to Misrata from the Sirte frontline on Thursday. “It’s a new Libya. No one can support him now. 42 years, it’s finally over!”
GlobalPost correspondent in Libya Tracey Shelton has exclusive video taken just seconds after Gaddafi is pulled from his hiding place.
The shock discovery of the former dictator, found cowering in a water drain on Thursday in his hometown of Sirte, was captured by Ali Algadi, a rebel fighter, with an iPhone just seconds after Gaddafi was dragged from the drain he was hiding in. This is the earliest footage to emerge so far.
Here is the video. Warning: it's very graphic.
GlobalPost's HDS Greenway writes from Amman, Jordan, that Libya will face a difficult challenge moving forward after the death of Gaddafi.
It is indicative that no one seems to agree just who pulled the trigger, or triggers, on Gaddafi. Libyans are fatally divided into tribes, clans, regions, and can agree on little. There is a lot of talk today about how now, with the tyrant dead, Libyans can move ahead to build their democracy. I wouldn’t count on it any time soon. For compared to what lies ahead, toppling the Gaddafi regime was the easy part. How to make a modern country out of the repressed mess that Gaddafi left behind is a challenge indeed.
GlobalPost correspondent Teri Schultz reports from Brussels that NATO is reacting cautiously to Gaddafi's death. NATO Secretary General Rasmussen says the mission’s end is “much closer.”
NATO has long tried to downplay the significance of the capture of former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi. Officials insisted that whether he lived or died, or was caught or escaped was basically irrelevant to its United Nations-mandated role of protecting civilians.
But even so, considering that the biggest remaining threat to Libya's population — the violent battle over Sirte — ended with Gaddafi’s death, the alliance was extraordinarily reticent.
GADDAFI FASHION
Something many of us will miss: Gaddafi fashion. Check out this GlobalPost photo gallery of Gaddafi's unique "style" through the years.
Gaddafi is not unique in every way. Here's a GlobalPost look at other dictators who have been overthrown by their own people.
CHAVEZ AND GADDAFI
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez remembers Muammar al Gaddafi as "a great fighter, a revolutionary and martyr." GlobalPost's Girish Gupta in Caracas has the story.
GlobalPost has another exclusive video captured on the mobile phone of 21-year-old Ali Algadi. This shows Gaddafi being dragged from his hiding place, bloodied and dazed. It is taken after the previous video. Those present shout repeatedly, “Don’t’ kill him! Don’t kill him! We need him alive.” The former dictator, however, was later confirmed to be dead.
Again, the video is graphic.
Photo Editor Nick Dynan put together this PlanetPic Photo Gallery: The Rise and Fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
And GlobalPost's correspondent in Libya, James Foley, has this video from Sirte on the capture and killing of Gaddafi. Through interviews with rebel fighters, Foley explains the importance of the killing of Gaddafi. The video is a powerful must-see, but please note that it is also graphic.
GlobalPost's Africa Editor Andrew Meldrum writes that Gaddafi's death has not been well received in every corner of the world. The former Libyan leader remains a hero in the eyes of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.
“This is a sad day for the people of Africa. This is the beginning of a new recolonization of Africa,” said retired Major Cairo Mhandu, a Zanu-PF member of parliament.
“Through the forces of NATO and the West, we have lost one of our brothers,” he told GlobalPost. “Muammar Gaddafi won elections and was a true leader. It is foreigners who toppled him, not Libyans. Gaddafi died fighting. He is a true African hero.”
GlobalPost's Middle East editor Peter Gelling analyzes what will happen to Libya now that Gaddafi has been captured and killed. Will a civil war break out?
While the revolution is at its end, deep divisions remain in the country, and fears of civil war are ever present. The Libyan rebels themselves are far from unified and have been jockeying for power amongst themselves for months. And, now that the focus of the rebels' firepower — Gaddafi — is gone, many Libyans worry that the real divisions within the rebel faction will begin to emerge in more serious, and possibly violent, ways.
VIDEOS OF LIBYAN CONFLICT
Here is a collection of GlobalPost videos that have covered the war in Libya from the ground. GlobalPost invites you to take a look back at the twists and turns of the Libyan uprising.
Here's a GlobalPost photo gallery showing a timeline of Gaddafi's rule.
Check out GlobalPost's slideshow of the women formerly known as Gaddafi's bodyguards.
Here is a GlobalPost slideshow of the top 10 crazy things Gaddafi has said.
EYEWITNESS RECOUNTS FINAL MOMENTS
GlobalPost's Libya correspondent James Foley talks to a rebel fighter, Imad Moustaf, who said he witnessed the capture and killing of Gaddafi Thursday in Sirte, the ruler's hometown.
Moustaf said Gaddafi had been shot in the head and close to the heart on the outskirts of the western roundabout of Sirte, where he was hiding in a hole surrounded by bodyguards. Moustaf claimed to have been in the ambulance with Gaddafi when he died.