Ignominious end for dictator Gaddafi as he is buried with his son Mutassim in unmarked desert grave at dawn

• Gaddafi clan members say prayers during the burial
• Bodies moved after four days in makeshift morgue which had become macabre attraction for locals
• 'The corpse couldn't last any longer' official says
• Report claims Gaddafi sodomised after capture
• Son Saif still at large and 'heading for the border'
• Bodyguard reveals how dictator spent final days

At dawn today, Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim met their ignominious end as they were finally buried in the Libyan desert in unmarked graves.
After decades in power the despot, who kept his people at bay with heinous crimes against humanity, was interred at a secret spot amid the desert sands.
'Only two trusted people were assigned to this secret mission,' said Abdel Majid Mlegta, an NTC official. 'These are not guards, but very trusted NTC people.'
As Gaddafi was finally laid to rest after four days in a makeshift morgue, reports claimed his favoured son, Saif, was making a desperate bid for the Niger border.

On display: The rotting corpse of Muammar Gaddafi in Misrata has now been taken away for burial in a secret location by rebels

Final Muslim prayers were said over the bodies of the former leader and his son Mutassim by Khaled Tantoush, Gaddafi's personal cleric, who was arrested with him, before they were removed from the Misrata compound where they had been on display.
The rites were also attended by two of Gaddafi's cousins, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, once leader of the feared People's Guard, and Ahmed Ibrahim.
All were captured with Gaddafi after their convoy was attacked by Nato war plans at they tried to flee Sirte, Gaddafi's home town, just after it had fallen.

 

'The NTC officials were handed the body after the sheikh completed the early morning ceremony and are taking him somewhere very far away into the desert,' Mr Mlegta.
The funeral closed the book on Gaddafi's nearly 42-year rule and the eight-month civil war to remove him, but did not silence international calls for an investigation into whether he was executed by his captors.

A brutal end: Images of the beatings meted out to Gaddafi in the minutes following his capture have shocked the world

Videos circulated online in the days following the former Libyan leader's killing at the hands of revolutionary soldiers show them taunting and beating him before his apparent summary execution.
Graphic footage showed how Gaddafi was dragged, wounded and bleeding, from the storm drain in which he had been hiding as rebel fighters rain blows down on him, pull him by his hair and kick dust into his face.
Globalpost.com claims that one particularly shocking film shows that in a final moment of humiliation one of the NTC men sodomised the fallen despot with a stick or knife as he was being dragged to his death.
A frame-by-frame analysis of the footage, which is too graphic for MailOnline to publish, seems to show a grey-clad fighter bending over behind Gaddafi and shoving an implement into his anus.
The bodies of Gaddafi, Muatassim and former Defence Minster Abu Bakr Younis were removed overnight from the commercial freezer in Misrata where they had been on display for four days.

Like father, like son: Colonel Gaddafi, left, and his son Mutassim, right, have both now been buried in a secret location in the Libyan desert

Local military spokesman Ibrahim Beitalmal had earlier said the burial was likely to take place today.
The three men were to be buried in unmarked graves in a secret desert location to avoid vandalism or the place becoming a shrine.

Asked about the removal of the bodies from the freezer, he said he was unaware of the process of burial getting under way.
However Salem al-Mohandes, a security guard at the warehouse complex, said the bodies were taken away late on Monday evening, where they had been on display for the past four days.
Mr al-Mohandes said: 'Our job is finished. He [Gaddafi] was transferred and the military council of Misrata took him away to an unknown location. I don't know whether they buried him or not.'
Associated Press reported seeing three vehicles leave the warehouse area late on Monday. On entering the freezer, it was then found to be empty.

Tourist attraction: Scores of Libyans queued to see the corpses of Gaddafi and his son Mutassim in a freezer in a Misrata warehouse

Rebels had put Gaddafi's body on show in a cold store while they argued over what to do with it after the fallen dictator was battered and shot dead last Thursday.
An official told Reuters: 'He will be buried in a simple burial with sheikhs attending the burial.
'It will be an unknown location in the open desert. The corpse cannot last any longer.'
The killing of Gaddafi, 69, in his hometown of Sirte brought to a close eight months of war and ending a nervous two-month hiatus since the rebel forces of the NTC overran the capital Tripoli.

RIGHTMINDS

MICHAEL BURLEIGH:

Like many people I was momentarily shocked by the mobile phone footage of Gaddafi being dragged from a culvert, beaten up and then shot in the head by what was undoubtedly a rebel lynch mob.
For sure Gaddafi's violent death was sickening, but the rest of the world does not inhabit the same safe cocoon we have constructed in Europe. Let's hope that in Libya violence ceases to be addictive.

Read more here

NTC officials had tried to negotiate with Gaddafi's tribal kinsmen from Sirte over where and how to dispose of the bodies.
'No agreement was reached for his tribe to take him,' an official said.
The NTC appeared to have decided that an anonymous grave would at least ensure the plot did not become a shrine.
The death of Gaddafi triggered mass rejoicing in Benghazi, the seat of the revolt.
However it also highlighted a lack of central control over disparate armed groups, and the jockeying for power among local commanders as negotiations began in earnest to form an interim government.
One senior NTC official in Tripoli said: 'Leaders from different regions, cities, want to negotiate over everything -- posts in government, budgets for cities, dissolving militias.
'Is that not democracy? It would be unusual if they did not after Muammar favored only a few places for 40 years. There is no reason why it cannot be peaceful.'

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