Cut down in the cross-fire between loyalists and rebels, then flung in a truck and executed in front of a baying mob, Gaddafi’s final moments were as brutal as his crimes.
Covered in blood and dirt, he had pleaded for his life – the answer was a bullet to the temple.
So how does it compare to the grisly deaths of other ruthless dictators such as Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Ceausescu and Rafael Trujillo? The circumstances varied, but the cold and bloody nature of their final seconds did not.
SADDAM HUSSEIN, December 30, 2006
Seven coils and pre-boiled to take out any stretch. One thing the U.S. and Iraq do have in common is their style of hangman’s noose.
Saddam Hussein, deposed dictator of Iraq, would have had little time to dwell on such trivia as he stood on the gallows to finally face justice.
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| The end: Masked men place a noose around Saddam Hussein’s neck. Found guilty of crimes against humanity on November 5, 2006, he was woken up on December 30 to be executed |
Like Muammar Gaddafi, he too had been found cowering in a grubby bolt-hole, in December 2003.
As one U.S. military commander said, he was ‘caught like a rat’.
Holed up in an underground chamber little bigger than a coffin, he surrendered without a fight when allied troops cornered him in a farm near Tikrit, his birthplace.
Bearded, thin and exhausted, he had been on the run for 250 days.
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‘Caught like a rat’: A bearded Saddam is dragged out of a hole in the ground on farmland near his birthplace of Tikrit
On November 5, 2006, he was finally found guilty of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. He was then sentenced to be hanged until dead.
A month later in Baghdad – at 6am on December 30 – he was led to a platform in a concrete chamber by masked men.
Wearing a white shirt and dark overcoat, he refused a hood and shouted ‘God is great’.
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| The body of Saddam Hussein in an undated image obtained by the Associated Press from an Arab language web site. Seemingly shot on a camera phone, the image appears to show the former Iraqi leader’s corpse, with a gaping neck wound |
Soldiers taunted him with insults until a judge demanded silence.
As he clutched a copy of the Koran, a noose was placed around his neck – waxed to guarantee a clean slide of the knots. The trapdoor was released and a loud crack was heard when his neck broke.
Left to swing for several minutes, a doctor was called to listen for a heartbeat. Saddam was dead.
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