What did happen to Qaddafi after the video above cut away? No one can seem to say for sure. Libyan interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril admitted late on Thursday that Qaddafi had been found alive but insisted he had been killed accidentally. "There was cross-fire and he was shot while they were carrying him to a truck," Jibril said. It's of course possible that this is accurate, but it's difficult to imagine what crossfire there might have been. The above video showed dozens of rebels crowded around Qaddafi and no pro-Qaddafi troops in sight. How, exactly, do two bullets of "crossfire" happen to wiz their way through such a dense crowd and just happen to strike Qaddafi in the head and chest?



Jibril told NPR, "Nobody can tell if the shot was from the rebel fighters or from his own security guard." By his own security guard? At least they're not claiming suicide.

Revolutions are messy at best, especially when they're led by an irregular and informally organized force of civilians who have picked up Kalashnikovs and titled themselves revolutionaries. It's not exactly a surprise that a group of angry young men would choose not to respect the rule of law at a moment of eye-to-eye contact with -- and absolute power over -- the brutal dictator who had so relentlessly ruined their country, their lives, and their families' lives. It would not have been difficult to predict, in other words, that despite the interim government's many assurances of a peaceful and orderly civilian trial for Qaddafi, that in the end the angry young men with guns -- who, after all, have led this movement from the beginning -- would win out.

Still, the rule of law matters, and not just within Libya. The U.S. and European mission in Libya was premised on international law form the beginning: a resolution from the United Nations Security Council, the UN doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect," as close as Libya could possibly get to offering NATO a popular rejection of Qaddafi and a stated invitation for outside intervention. And though NATO's mission clearly and rapidly expanded beyond the spirit of the UN-approved "no-fly zone," at least it remained within the letter of the resolution and within the framework of an internationally approved and Libyan-approved action. U.S. and European leaders also cited, as a premise of their intervention, the International Criminal Court warrants out for the arrest and trial of Qaddafi, son Saif, and intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi. Both NATO and Libya's rebel leaders pledged to bring Qaddafi before a courtroom of some kind, whether in Libya or in The Hague. But the men on the ground don't appear to have given this much mind.



For all the meticulous legality and diplomatic decorum of this war's start, its end was as dirty as they come: the former leader of a nation hauled off the back of a truck and shot by an angry mob that was appointed by no one and accountable to nothing. It's an inauspicious start for what the interim Libyan leadership also said was the same moment that formal political transition began.



Late on Thursday, another video emerged, this one showing son Muatassim Qaddafi apparently alive in rebel custody. Muatassim, like father Muammar, was later killed.

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