Qaddafi body stashed in shopping center freezer

The body of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi lies on a mattress in a morgue in Misrata, Libya, Oct. 21, 2011. / AP Photo/Manu Brabo

MISRATA, Libya - Muammar Qaddafi's blood-streaked body has been stashed in a commercial freezer at a shopping center as Libyans try to keep it away from crowds as they figure out where and when to bury the hated leader.

An AP correspondent saw the body Friday at the shopping center in the coastal city of Misrata, home of the fighters who killed the ousted leader a day earlier in his hometown of Sirte.

The body, stripped to the waist and wearing beige trousers, is laid on a bloodied mattress on the floor of a room-sized freezer where restaurants and stores in the center keep perishables. A bullet hole is visible on the left side of his head and in the center of his chest. Dried blood streaks his arms and head.

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Bloody images of Qaddafi's last moments in the hands of angry captors have raised questions over his treatment minutes before his death. The U.N. human rights office has called for an investigation into his death.

Qaddafi's demise came as he and a band of loyalists tried to flee Sirte but were hit by a NATO airstrike consisting of French warplanes and a U.S. Predator drone. NATO officials have said they were unaware Qaddafi was in the convoy.

After surviving the strike, Qaddafi and a group of bodyguards hid in a nearby drainage pipe where they were discovered by Libyan fighters. Qaddafi was wounded in an ensuing firefight, but who initially shot him is still unknown. According to one account, his own bodyguard fired on him to save him the disgrace of being captured, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.

But Qaddafi didn't die in the initial struggle and bloody images of his subsequent final moments raise questions about the circumstances of his end. Video on Arab television stations showed a crowd of fighters shoving and pulling the goateed, balding Qaddafi, with blood splattered on his face and soaking his shirt.

(Below is a graphic video first aired on Al Jazeera showing what is apparently Qaddafi's last moments alive, following his capture by rebels.)

Qaddafi struggled against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters pushed him onto the hood of a pickup truck. One fighter held him down, pressing on his thigh with a pair of shoes in a show of contempt.

Fighters propped him on the hood as they drove for several moments, apparently to parade him around in victory.

"We want him alive. We want him alive," one man shouted before Qaddafi was dragged off the hood, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.

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According to a Sky News translation, Qaddafi shouted at the fighters, saying that "what you are doing is forbidden in Islam!"

"Do you know right from wrong?" he also reportedly said before apparently losing consciousness.

One of the fighters reportedly replied, "Shut up, dog."

Later footage showed fighters rolling Qaddafi's lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head. His body was then paraded on a car through Misrata, a nearby city that suffered a brutal siege by regime forces during the eight-month civil war that eventually ousted Qaddafi. Crowds in the streets cheered, "The blood of martyrs will not go in vain."

Libyan fighters also took Qaddafi's personal weapon, his golden pistol, and paraded it around Sirte as a trophy, reports Palmer.

Libyan leaders said it appeared that Qaddafi had been caught in the crossfire and it was unclear who fired the bullet that killed him.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said a coroner's report showed that Qaddafi was killed by a bullet to the head and died in the ambulance on the way to a field hospital. Qaddafi was already injured from battle when he was found in the drainage pipe, Shammam said.

"It seems like the bullet was a stray and it could have come from the revolutionaries or the loyalists," Shammam said, echoing an account given by Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril the night before. "The problem is everyone around the event is giving his own story."

Shammam said that the TNC was expecting a report from Financial Minister Ali Tarhouni who was sent as an envoy to Misrata on Thursday.

The U.N. Human Rights Council established an independent panel earlier this year to investigate abuses in Libya, and spokesman Rupert Colville said it would likely examine the circumstances of the 69-year-old leader's death. He said it was too early to say whether the panel -- which includes Canadian judge Philippe Kirsch, the first president of the International Criminal Court -- would recommend a formal investigation at the national or international level.

"We believe there is a need for an investigation," Colville said. "More details are needed to ascertain whether he was killed in some form of fighting or was executed after his capture."

"The two cell phone videos that have emerged, one of him alive, and one of him dead, taken together are very disturbing," he told reporters in Geneva.

Mohamed Sayeh, a senior member of TNC, said representatives from the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court would come to a "go through the paperwork."

Sayeh also says Qaddafi's body is still in Misrata, where it was taken after his killing in Sirte. He says Qaddafi will be buried with respect according to Islam tradition and will not have a public funeral.

The ICC did not issue any official comments about Qaddafi, but judges at the court would need official confirmation - most likely a DNA sample from the body - that Qaddafi is dead before they could formally withdraw his indictment.

[johnpatrick1]

As repulsive as the Libuans found slaughtered and burned in garages and wharehouses around Tripoli by this Dictators forces and under his orders..like Mussolinini of Fascist Italy and Cescuseau of Albania and would should have happened to Pol Pot of Cambodia, Hitler etc etc..these bastards got what they dealt out for years and let it be a warning to ALL AND THAT INCLUDES AMERICA AS WELL that AUTHORITARIAN BASTARDS COME TO SOME PRETTY GRUESSOME ENDS AT THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE THEY ABUSED FOR YEARS. Ride the tiger and then be eaten by the tiger.

[BlabberBox]

join www.myblabberbox.com and discuss the current topic

[epom88]

C'mon, CBS! Please practice a little tact/discretion. The graphic photos should be something that we must click on to view or have a warning that shows BEFORE opening the article (or something along those lines... so that graphic photos are not catching readers off guard as soon as the article is opened). I should not have to be exposed to such violence in order to read a bit of news. Between this and the video from the other day of the child being run over, I'll be relying on another website for my "mainstream" news.

[rwsmith29456]

Obviously they didn't want him to be taken captive. From some of the stuff Qaddafi said I didn't get the idea that he wanted to die rather than being taken alive. Well, now there isn't any question about answering for his actions in a court, same as Bin Laden.

[billkol]

"I supported these young rebels from the very beginning...but they handled this all wrong...This man made terrible decisions in his life and many suffered because of him but in his confused mind he saw things differently. He deserved better than this...a terrible outcome to what could have been a glorious victory."

[mask2697]

We all knew he would die like this, I personally expected much worse of a death for him, He slaughtered so many men that no one should be surprised at this outcome

[Arviebird]

I meant to say why is this dead man on a mattress in a freezer. Why would they put him on that? It appears it is a new mattress with the plastic still on. For that matter does this freezer even work? Why isn't there any ice on the thin plastic or anything else. Why has is body not swollen up any as is generally the case when a body has not been circulating for 24 hours and left in the heat or room temp. It's all a mystery to me.

[Arviebird]

Why is this dead man a mattress? Doesn't it make you think this isn't real? We can see there is blood and cuts but is this just another ploy to make the world think he's dead when he isn't? Why aren't they burying him? It's very important in their religion to bury within 24 hours. Perhaps he's waiting for a plastic surgern who will change his face and he'll be sucking down drinks on the beach in Florida before long. I don't think he's gone.

[mask2697]

because no one thinks he deserves a proper burial, there are a very short supply of Quadaffi mourners left

[Jaylah54]

Perhaps this is what you get when you, in false bravado when you're outmanned and outgunned, insist that you will "fight to the death."

When Daffy-duck said that, my first thought was, "I'm sure that can be arranged."

I find his pleas of "Don't shoot!", "[W]hat you are doing is forbidden in Islam!" and "Do you know right from wrong?" highly ironic, considering his past deeds.

Big talk until he was found cowering in a sewer like the rat he was.

[AmericanConscious]

Look what his fellow Muslims are doing to one of their own. Showing his beaten body with bullet holes in it over and over again and still not giving him a proper Muslim burial.
So what the hell was Obama so intent of not releasing Osama Bin Ladens death photos and his hurry to give him a respectful burial at sea.
Obama is so full od sh-t and a Muslim placator and is probably one himself to feed us all that BS when Osama was assassinated by him.

[kidsdaddy]

When we "killed" Osama, I thought we couldn't show the body because it was disrespectful to the muslim faith. If that is the case, why they putting Qaddafi on display like this?

[AmericanConscious]

Hey, you beat me to it!
It was Osama, I mean Obams bullsh-t all the way.
Everthing Obama Bin Lying says and does never fails to p@ss me off.
Not even Clinton did like this MF'r!!!

[Jaylah54]

Well, it was an American military group that raided Osama's compound, and we had the *option* to show photos or not.

It was a group of Libyan forces that found Qaddafi, took photos of his wounded -- and then dead -- body and then put them on the internet for all to see. In other words, we didn't have control of those images, where we did have the ones of Osama.

But then, I know that interferes with your hate-Obama rhetoric, so you've conveniently ignored what you already knew.