Salon.com > Gadhafi's Final Days

Eyewitness recounts Gadhafi’s death

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:47:00 +0000

SIRTE, Libya -- Imad Moustaf, a rebel fighter, said he witnessed the capture and killing of toppled Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi Thursday in Sirte, the ruler's hometown.

Moustaf said Gadhafi 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 Gadhafi when he died. The BBC, who spoke to another Libyan rebel, also reported that Gadhafi had been hiding in a hole. The BBC also reported that Gadhafi yelled, "Don't shoot," before he was killed.

Other rebel fighters said that Gadhafi's body, along with dozens of loyalist prisoners, was being taken to Misrata.

Motassim Gadhafi, the fifth son of Gadhafi and a Libyan Army officer who is believed to have been directing the final stand in Sirte, was also confirmed dead. His body was seen at a local field hospital.

Gadhafi’s Hollywood ending

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:01:00 +0000

Poor Moammar Gadhafi. Libya’s longtime leader, dubbed "the Mad Dog of the Middle East" by President Ronald Reagan over his support for terrorism, came in from the cold after Sept. 11 by collaborating with the CIA in the fight against al-Qaida and offering American firms access to his oil fields. Look what he got for his good behavior: the enmity of his people and uninvited strangers visiting his seaside villa.

Gadhafi had warmed American hearts in 2004 by normalizing relations with George W. Bush's administration and falling hard for Condoleezza Rice. The colonel was still an SOB, but now he was our SOB.

“Blood in the Corners” by J. Robert Lennon

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:14:00 +0000

He is in a caravan, one of many identical military transports, on their way someplace, he doesn't know where. The driver has stopped talking to him: radio silence. There has been a plan for some time now, since the Americans tried to kill him in '86, that would bring him out through the tunnels, toward Buslim, and then south, in the event of war. But there is fighting in Buslim and so they have driven northwest along the coast, then inland again, and now they are not sure where to go, as the rebels have surrounded the houses and the airport, and this was never part of the plan, everything happening everywhere at once. They didn't imagine it could happen so fast. They didn't imagine the Arab Spring.

What they did imagine is that there might be a time when the Revolutionary Leader would have to ride alone for some hours in a windowless bulletproof chamber, and that's where he is now. It is air-conditioned, and soundproof. There is a bed, where he sits, legs crossed, and a water cooler, and a glass-fronted bookcase, and an entertainment console complete with stereo and television. The bookcase, to his dismay, contains little to read: only the Koran and his own -- he admits it, boring -- writings. The Green Book? Please. He was barely 30 when he wrote the thing. The rest of the bookcase is filled with videocassettes.

“Republic of Fear” by Shann Ray

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:13:00 +0000

"Young one, do you know what to call me?"

The old man nearly whispered the words, his mane of hair curled over his face, his head down and knees wrapped in his arms. The face now, the reporters proclaimed, had become the mask of a clown, long and drawn, darkened, mean. Gadhafi Deposed ... Libyan Despot Desolated ... Gadhafi Hunted ... the news ticked in his head. But the ease with which he countered it amused him. I am the hunter, the colonel thought, they the hunted. He and the child were in a black box, a small space 10-by-10 in the middle of the city. From the seams where the wall met the ceiling, light pierced the room like lines of fire in the blackness. They'd been here seven days, undiscovered. His own secret cell, an encasement he'd made for himself long ago with 12-foot-deep concrete walls, hidden in the midst of all. Air vents, small propane cook stove, a bed, water, no nurse, no tent, nothing else now but the boy, and the body of the boy's father in the corner of the room covered by a blanket. The boy's father had died two days ago. No radio, no contact. The colonel hadn't yet planned how or when he might emerge. Not now, he knew, but when, he didn't know.

“The Supreme Leader Dreams of Love” by Steve Almond

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:12:00 +0000

For him, all resided in balance. Without balance, he could not be who he needed to be: Brother Leader, Guide of the Revolution, King of Kings.

The men around him -- wise sycophants, pampered sons, fat generals with medals over their hearts -- required this of him. They were sly and every moment relentless. They whispered slanders and bowed deeply. For each of his 42 years at the helm of liberty, it had been thus. And he had kept these forces aligned only by a scrupulous and continual application of his balance.

He stepped into a room and a great calm settled, like the veil a bride might wear, something to lure and disguise, and this was the sensation of balance, of knowing whom to embrace, whom to shun, whom to dismiss into the night with its perfume of balsam and gasoline.

How, then, to explain the feelings stirred in him by Leezza? The lurch beneath his ribs? The moist trembling of his tongue?

He had been married before: first to his soldiers, then to his wives, then to history. He had absorbed the roar of sand and bombs. This was not like that. It was something to do with his soul, a disturbance at the delicate border where his body joined his soul.

“Solace” by Pauls Toutonghi

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:10:00 +0000

Do you know when the phoenix comes to Misrata?

Every 500 years. That's twice a millennium. Twice a millennium, the phoenix builds its nest of sticks and leaves and sun-baked mud, and then it burns itself -- a terrible immolation. Five centuries. Six thousand moons. From flame, a new generation.

Golden, soot-streaked feathers; its wings twitch. The new bird rises up and in its talons, it carries the ashes of its father, sealed in an egg of myrrh -- carries them to Heliopolis, the Egyptian City of the Sun, for burial. Every phoenix is buried in Heliopolis, that city of the sun in the desert -- like every city in this part of the world is a city of the sun in the desert.

We're not far from Heliopolis, in Misrata. We're only several hundred kilometers. The acrid scent of gasoline hangs over the highway that stretches between us. So if you're lucky enough to be alive on that night, twice a millennium, when the phoenix appears, having just buried its father -- stand outside, look toward the horizon. Do not be afraid. It will be a massive bird. A beautiful, wide-winged creature. It will reflect the sun as it sweeps in a great circle, sweeps out across Al Butnan and then the Gulf of Sidra and then, disappears.

“In Sirte” by Joshua Furst

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:09:00 +0000

The rats are rising out of their sewers. They're crawling all over each other now, racing toward me in their pickup trucks. The foam drips from their mouths. Their daggers are out. But when they try to look through their bloodshot eyes, they see nothing. They are blind ...

Just there, behind them, is the great desert ... and the valley of sand where our tents once sat ... If I could take the rats back there with me now. Sit them down in the shade of my father's tent and feed them tea and lamb ... remind them of what life was like under the Italians, how we starved, how we bled, how our women were treated ... and the lies and deceit of Idris -- their hero, they know nothing of the man -- after we finally won our independence ... the Americans ... the British ... the dogs he let loose on our land.

But why would they listen? What do they care for Nassar and the Arab ideal? ... What do they even remember?

They've forgotten who they are and who they could be ... Ungrateful rats. They've forgotten the slaves they would have been without me ... I offered them Arabia. I offered them Africa. I promised to crush those who sought to enslave them ...

“Mad Dog’s Daughter” by Will Boast

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:08:00 +0000

It has been 25 years since the imperialists last attacked me. Today, my Hana, you would've been a young woman. I would like to have seen your 30th birthday. We would've celebrated in a Bedouin tent in the desert, not in this hell of a city. A man can't breathe when he's lost in the streets of this city, never mind how he feels hiding in these tunnels. They attacked from the air, my Hana; I could not protect you from their cowardice. Hana, my other children are traitors and failures. But I have forgiven them. They squander their inheritance on football and cars and making incomprehensible movies. They beat their girlfriends and get caught beating servants. They plot against me. (Even then, I forgive them.) Now all my children, it seems, are ungrateful and turn against me. The world has never known such an act of forgiveness as I'm asked to make. And they ask it of a poor Bedouin without even a birth certificate, a Bedouin who began his journey with only his staff and his dignity, a poor, solitary Bedouin who has tried to lead his children out of this hell of a city and now must flee it alone.

“I Know Them for Their Wounds” by Alexander Yates

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:06:00 +0000

It is my deepest hope that the man who called himself the King of Kings will go undiscovered. This is a change for me. When I first started looking for Gadhafi, just a few days ago, my intentions were to reach as far down his throat as I could and grab his tongue at the root, or to put my thumbs knuckledeep through his eyes. I meant to kill the man, if such a thing was possible. Mind -- I don't say possible out of any misplaced awe for the addled murderer. Absent Gadhafi's soldiers and walls, he's as killable as any other slightly puffy old man. I say it because I didn't know if it was possible for me to kill him, given my recent condition. It's only been a few days since I was shot, and already I can move objects. If I concentrate hard enough I can lift an empty drinking glass, or even push open doors. But wrapping my fingers around the old man's throat? That, as yet, is beyond me.