Beaten,shot,stuffed in meat locker

Interviews with those who said they were present build a picture of Gaddafi’s final hours. He was alive when he captured outside Sirte. In the video,he is dazed and wounded as he is heaved off the bonnet of a Toyota pick-up,then pulled to the ground by his hair. “Keep him alive,keep him alive!” someone shouts.

Another man in the crowd lets out a hysterical scream. Gaddafi then goes out of view and gunshots ring out.

“They captured him alive and while he was being taken away,they beat him and killed him,” one senior National Transitional Council source said. In what appeared to contradict events in the video,the NTC said Gaddafi was shot in the head in crossfire between government troops and his supporters after his capture.

Government fighter Ahmed al-Masalati from Misrata said Gaddafi’s convoy escaped at 6.30 am. At 8.15,a NATO Mirage came in. It shot at the group of cars.

Gaddafi himself escaped the carnage. Mansour Daou,leader of Gaddafi’s bodyguards,was with the ousted leader shortly before he died. He said Gaddafi and a handful of his men appeared to have taken refuge in the two drainage pipes. But NTC fighters were hot on their tail.

“One of Gaddafi’s men came out waving his rifle in the air and shouting surrender,but as soon as he saw my face he started shooting at me,” fighter Saleem Bakeer said. “Then I think Gaddafi must have told them to stop. ‘He said Muammar Gaddafi is here and he is wounded’,” said Bakeer. “We went in and brought Gaddafi out. He was saying ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s going on?’ Then we took him and put him in the car.”

On Friday,the NTC initially said Gaddafi would be buried in accordance with Islamic law,which generally requires a burial within 24 hours,but that the location of the grave had not been determined. As the Libyan leadership attempted to figure out their next step,Gaddafi’s blood-streaked body was stashed in a commercial freezer at a shopping centre in the coastal city of Misrata. The body,stripped to the waist and wearing beige trousers,was laid on a bloodied mattress on the floor of the room-sized freezer where restaurants and stores in the centre normally keep meat and other perishables.