Libya has retreated from a claim that Moammar Gadhafi was killed by cross fire and says it will prosecute those guilty of killing him after his capture.The interim government changed its position after a week of sustained criticism of the ousted leader's captors, who used camera phones to record his final minutes.
Videos -- including images of a wounded Gadhafi apparently being sodomized with a stick or a knife or some other spike-shaped weapon -- caused widespread revulsion outside the country and strong denunciations by the transitional government's international backers.
National Transitional Council Vice Chairman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, a human-rights lawyer, said Libya would try to bring to justice anyone proven to have fired the shots that killed Gadhafi.
"Whoever is responsible for [Gaddafi's killing] will be judged and given a fair trial," he told the Saudi-owned Arabic-language al-Arabiya satellite news channel Thursday, explaining Libya's new government has "a code of ethics" for handling prisoners of war.
The killing was likely "an individual act and not an act of revolutionaries or the national army," Ghoga said.
A rebel fighter who identified himself as Senad el-Sadik el-Ureybi claimed in a leaked video a couple of days after Gadhafi's capture that he shot and killed the former ruler.
"We grabbed him. I hit him in the face," the fighter said in Arabic. "Some fighters wanted to take him away and that's when I shot him twice, in the head and in the chest."
He said he didn't like the idea of Gadhafi being caught alive. He also said if took a half hour for Gadhafi to die after being shot.
His account was not independently confirmed.
Whoever killed Gadhafi is widely known in Misurata, Libya, as is the Katiba Ghoran unit he belonged to, Britain's Guardian reported Friday.
Misuratan forces played important roles in the fall of Tripoli Aug. 21, and in and the south coastal city of Sirte, Libya, Oct. 20, where Gadhafi was captured, bloodied but alive, in a wastewater drain.
Gadhafi had tried to flee Sirte, as fighters battling the vestiges of his fallen regime wrested control of his hometown.
The ousted dictator died of bullet wounds to his head and chest on the way to a hospital, a post-mortem indicated.
Until now, the official account from Libya's fledgling government said Gadhafi was killed in cross fire in fighting with loyalists after his capture.
NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil said Monday he ordered an inquiry to determine how Gadhafi was killed, suggesting the fatal bullets might have come from Gadhafi supporters who feared he would implicate them in atrocities if he survived and was put on trial.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to lift the no-fly zone over Libya and cancel its authorization for military action Monday, despite an NTC request for NATO to stay until the end of the year to stop Gadhafi loyalists from fleeing to neighboring countries.
After the vote, NATO, which led the air campaign against the loyalists, confirmed it would cease operations by 11:59 p.m. Libyan time Monday, when it would hand control of Libyan air space back to local authorities.
Separately, Gadhafi son and previous heir-apparent Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, 39, was reported in Niger Friday.
The Guardian cited officials in Niger as saying Gadhafi planned to join his brother Saadi Gadhafi and former Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi in exile.
But it also cited LIbyan officials as saying the London-educated Saif al-Islam Gadhafi hoped to fly to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, for trial to avoid a fate like his father.
The court, which has no death penalty, issued an arrest warrant for him and Senussi for alleged crimes against humanity -- charges both men deny.
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