News & Views

The belated finale for Muammar Gaddafi began on a marble slab in a car park and ended with a lonely burial in the desert far from the reach of family or foe. After his body spent five days on gruesome display, Libya's new rulers finally decided late on Monday night to put Gaddafi to rest, capping a week of uncertainty about what to do with the slain despot's remains and closing an era of fear and infamy. "We gave him all the Islamic rituals that we would give any Muslim," said the deputy chief of Libya's new governing council in Misrata, Sadiq Badi. "It was more than he would have given us, but we gave him a dignified end." He was prepared for burial alongside two other corpses – his son Mutassim and his former military chief, Abu Bakr Younes, who had been holed up with him during the fall of Sirte.