By Barry Malone
REUTERS
TRIPOLI: Moammar Gadhafi and his son Motassim were buried in a secret desert location Tuesday, five days after the deposed Libyan leader was captured, killed and put on grisly public display.
“[Gadhafi] has just been buried now in the desert along with his son,” National Transitional Council commander Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters by telephone.

Gadhafi’s cleric, Khaled Tantoush, who was captured with him, prayed over the bodies before they were taken from the compound in the coastal city of Misrata, where they had been on show, and handed to two NTC loyalists for burial, he said.

The NTC had worried many outsiders by displaying the corpses in a meat locker in the fiercely anti-Gadhafi city of Misrata until the decaying state of the corpses forced them Monday to call a halt.

Under pressure from Western allies, the NTC promised the same day to investigate how Gadhafi and his son were killed. Mobile phone footage shows both alive after their capture. The former leader was seen being mocked, beaten and abused before he died, in what NTC officials claim was crossfire.
The saga has made Western allies of Libya’s interim leadership uneasy about the prospects for the rule of law and stable government in the post-Gadhafi era.

“I laughed when I saw him being beaten as he deserved to be. And I laugh again now that I know he is in the ground,” said Emani Zaid, 20, a student in Tripoli. “If the men who buried him are true free Libyans, they can keep the secret [of his grave].”

Determined to prevent Gadhafi’s grave becoming a shrine for his supporters, the NTC wants its location kept secret, refusing custody to his tribe.

The prayers for the dead were attended by two of Gadhafi’s cousins, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, once leader of the feared People’s Guard, and Ahmad Ibrahim. Both were captured with him after a NATO airstrike hit a convoy of vehicles trying to break out of Sirte.

For Ali Azzarog, 47, an engineer, it was good riddance.
“Throw him in a hole, in the sea, in garbage. No matter. He is lower than a donkey or a dog and only foreigners say they care about how we killed him. And they are lying,” he said.

Libyans rose up against Gadhafi’s 42-year rule in February, defying a violent response that was parried by NATO air power under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians.
Libyan interim Oil and Finance Minister Ali Tarhouni said the NTC wanted NATO to maintain its mission for another month.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said NATO would be discussing when and how to end its mission over Libya.
“What I would do at this point is leave the decision as to a future security involvement in the hands of NATO, and then beyond that, that will give us a basis on which to determine whether there’s an additional role we can play,” he told a news conference in Japan.

Gadhafi’s death ended eight months of war in Sirte and elsewhere even after the NTC’s ragtag militias captured the capital, Tripoli, in August.

Hatred of Gadhafi unified his disparate opponents, who may now tussle for power during a planned transition to democracy in a nation riven with regional and tribal rivalries. “Leaders from different regions, cities, want to negotiate over everything – posts in government, budgets for cities, dissolving militias,” said one senior NTC official in Tripoli, though he defended this as a healthy expression of freedom.

At times, Gadhafi’s body appeared to have become a macabre bargaining chip for Misrata, which endured a pitiless war-time siege, and whose leaders now demand a big say in the new Libya.
Fears that Gadhafi’s sons might wage an Iraq-style insurgency have faded since the deaths of Motassim and his brother Khamis, a military commander, who was killed earlier.

Abuses apparently committed by both sides in the civil war may also impede reconciliation. New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the NTC Monday to probe an “apparent mass execution” of 53 people, apparently Gadhafi loyalists, whom it found dead, some with their hands bound, at a Sirte hotel.

In Tripoli, a 33-year-old waiter, who was too scared to give his name, praised what he said was Gadhafi’s courage: “If you say Gadhafi died like a coward, you are wrong. He died proud like a lion.”

One of Gadhafi’s sons, the enigmatic Seif al-Islam, remains on the run. Once viewed as a moderate reformer, Seif al-Islam vowed to help his father crush his enemies once the revolt began.
An NTC official said Seif al-Islam was in the remote southern desert near Niger and Algeria and was set to flee Libya using a false passport.

In Niger, there was no official comment on Seif al-Islam, but the government has made clear its support for the ICC.
“The instructions in Niger are very clear: if this son of Gadhafi enters Niger, he must be arrested and placed immediately in the hands of the authorities,” a Nigerien military source said.