Gaddafi body ’set to be buried’

25 October 2011 Last updated at 03:44 ET

The bodies have been on display in Misrata for the last four days

There are unconfirmed reports that the body of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is being prepared for burial.

Witnesses said the body of Col Gaddafi, his son and a former aide were taken overnight from the cold storage facility in Misrata where they have been on public view.

An NTC official told Reuters news agency a “simple” burial would take place in the “open desert”.

The BBC cannot independently verify the reports.

There has been uncertainty among the transitional Libyan leadership about what to do with the bodies.

Colonel Gaddafi’s family had requested the return of the bodies so they could be buried outside the former leader’s hometown of Sirte.

But officials from the National Transitional Council (NTC) had expressed a preference for a secret burial.

‘Unknown location’

An NTC official told Reuters news agency that Col Gaddafi would be buried in a “simple” ceremony with “sheikhs attending” on Tuesday.

“It will be an unknown location in the open desert,” he said, adding that a burial was needed because decomposition of the body had reached the point where the “corpse cannot last any longer”.

Al-Jazeera television quoted an NTC source as saying the burial had already taken place, at dawn in an unknown location.

A security guard at the meat storage warehouse in Misrata where Col Gaddafi’s body has been held told al-Jazeera that the three bodies had been moved late on Monday.

“Our job is finished,” Salem al Mohandes said. “[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.”

An Associated Press Television News team confirmed it saw three vehicles leave the warehouse area late on Monday, and when they entered the facility the bodies were no longer there.

The BBC’s Katya Adler in Tripoli says there is no independent confirmation that Col Gaddafi has been buried, although rumours of a secret burial in the desert have been gathering pace in the Libyan capital.

She says the question of how to dispose of Col Gaddafi’s body has been a political minefield for the new Libyan leadership, and is the reason why it has taken four days for a decision to be taken.

They were concerned that any public grave could become a shrine for Gaddafi loyalists or as a target of hatred for those who opposed his regime.

But, in the end, our correspondent says, the decomposition of the body meant the NTC had to act.

Questions have been raised over the former leader’s death after video footage showed him alive at the time of capture in Sirte on Thursday. Officials said he had been killed subsequently in a crossfire.

A post-mortem carried out on the 69-year-old’s body on Sunday showed he had received a bullet wound to the head, medical sources said.

The acting Libyan leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, said the NTC had formed a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding his death.

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