War crime
claim over
slaughter
of Gaddafi
by militia

The report by Human Rights Watch on alleged rebel abuses that followed the October 2011 capture of the city of Sirte in the final major battle of the eight-month civil war is one of the most detailed descriptions of war crimes committed by the militias that toppled Gaddafi, and which still play a major role in Libyan politics today.

The 50-page report Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte details the last hours of Gaddafi’s life on October 20, when he tried to flee the besieged city.

His convoy was struck by Nato aircraft as it tried to escape and the survivors were attacked by militias from the city of Misrata, who captured and disarmed the dictator and his entourage.

Misrata was subjected to a brutal weeks-long siege by Gaddafi’s forces that killed hundreds of residents, and fighters from the city became the regime’s most implacable foes.

HRW says the evidence suggests that Misratans took revenge against their prisoners in Sirte.

The New York-based group’s report said that new evidence unearthed in its investigation includes a mobile phone video clip taken by militiamen showing a large number of prisoners from Gaddafi’s convoy being cursed and abused by rebels. The remains of least 17 of the detainees in the phone video were later identified in a group of 50 bodies found at Sirte’s Mahari hotel, some still with their hands tied behind their back.

Human Rights Watch said it used hospital mortuary photos to confirm the victims’ identities.

The dictator himself was seen alive in a widely-circulated video that was made public shortly after the battle.

“Video footage shows that Muammar Gaddafi was captured alive but bleeding heavily from a head wound,” the HRW report says.

But footage showed that he was “severely beaten by opposition forces, stabbed with bayonet in his buttocks, causing more injuries, and bleeding. By the time he is filmed being loaded into an ambulance half-naked, he appears lifeless”.

Peter Bouckaert, HRW emergencies director said the group’s “findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire and not after his capture”.

Gaddafi’s son Muatassim was also videotaped alive and in captivity, only to have his body turn up at a mortuary in Misrata alongside his father’s.

“In case after case we investigated, the individuals had been videotaped alive by the opposition fighters who held them and then found dead hours later,” Mr Bouckaert said. “Our strongest evidence for these executions comes from the footage filmed by the opposition forces and the physical evidence at the Mahari hotel where the 66 bodies were found.”

Suleiman al-Fortia, a member of the dissolved National Transitional Council from Misrata, denied Gaddafi or his loyalists were executed. “We hoped to arrest Gaddafi alive (to try him). All the killings took place in a crossfire,” he said.

But the report said that “under the laws of war, the killing of captured combatants is a war crime, and Libyan civilian and military authorities have an obligation to investigate war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law”.