Should the people who killed Gadhafi be put on trial, and if found guilty face the full force of the law?
I’m torn by this. I can certainly understand the reaction of those who found him, but I cannot condone it. OTOH, it hardly seems just to execute someone for killing the guy. I don’t even know what type of legal code is in force in Libya, but I think we can safely say that every country outlaws murder. (Not saying these guys are murderers, but they might be.)
When all is said and done, I think the country might be better served by a general grant of amnesty, but that would also cover those remaining folks from the Ancien Regime, as long as they surrender peacefully to the new authorities. We’ve seen this done successfully in other situations not too dissimilar from this one.
I’m not sure there is any law under which they can be charged. What happened was essentially a revolution. Arguably, there was no law in existence at the time of the alleged crime. My understanding is that Libya intends to set up a new legal system–unfortunately, one which will be based on Shariah law. I have no idea how Libya views the matter, but I have a real problem with prosecuting someone under a law that took effect after the alleged crime was committed.
I question the prevailing thinking that Gadhafi supporters where the majority cause of massacres during the uprising. Killing him as it was done (if all the cell vids are legit) was not a lone occurrence, the former rebels where on a slaughtering spree no less than the former loyalists where. I do not think granting amnesty will heal the wounds in this case. Bad blood will linger longer without the new government at least prosecuting some of the atrocities on both sides.
Can you flesh that argument out? I’m not familiar with it. And if it’s true, wouldn’t that apply to deaths caused by Gadhafi forces in said revolution?
That’s the thing about war–the winners get to write the history books, and in the case of revolutions, make/apply the law. I do not know what they’re going to do, but I suspect whatever they do will favor the winning side as heroes, and treat the losing side as traitors/criminals whenever such is convenient.
Murder is different from killing. A soldier doesn’t murder an enemy soldier, he kills him. This is considered to be perfectly reasonable and lawful. While there may not have been a declaration of war, a rebellion resulting in an overthrow of the government is pretty clearly an act of war, not terrorism nor murder.
On the other hand, in a war, there are still war crimes – killing innocents, torturing soldiers, etc. I’m not sure where killing the leader of the nation falls in this regard, whether he’s a valid war target or not. According to the chess-rules version of warfare, the king is never supposed to be taken. Otherwise, war would just come down to who could assassinate the other guy first (and what’s the fun in that?) But things have changed quite a bit since chess was invented.
No, he doesn’t, if the guys that won the war say so. As they likely will. You seem to be arguing from an objective point of view. Reality doesn’t always work objectively. Here, a considerably more subjective approach seems the more likely result.
Is his killing still in dispute? I mean, the conditions surrounding it. Where they are under attack or not? That will make all the difference in the world. I don’t really know too much about what’s out there.
However, assuming they were not under attack nor was Gadhafi resisting, and assuming he was shot in the head by a rebel soldier unprovoked, then that’s clearly illegal. One set of laws that would apply internationally would be the laws of war/LOAC/IHL (another set would be Human Rights Law if this did not occur in an armed conflict). I’m not sure whether the Libyan courts, today, claim jurisdiction over those body of laws, but they could convene a commission, or send them to the ICC/a court with universal jurisdiction.
If somehow the story comes out and it’s a very cut and dried case of a pistol to the head execution and a rebel admits it and witnesses confirm it, then you’re hand is almost forced to try the person. I do not believe the facts will ever be so cut and dried, though. You keep it foggy. Because, while the laws should be blind, people aren’t. And not many people want someone tried for killing a ruthless dictator.
Not really. It sounds pretty clear that his convoy was bombed while fleeing Sirte and the rebels caught him after that. Then he was captured, beaten, possibly stabbed in the rectum, and eventually shot. If he’d been shooting at them and been killed in battle there wouldn’t be much to discuss.
There’s video of a lot of it. That’s the only reason it’s gotten this far. It can’t really be chalked up to the fog of war when it’s clear he was taken prisoner and then executed.
Ok. I watched some of that video of his…enhanced handling. I thought they took him somewhere, and came under fire again, and then he was shot. I was thinking that was a plausible deniability type cover (I’m not saying that’s what happened, I’m saying that’s what they are saying happened to get out of a sticky situation).
If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. The transition council has offered a lot of different stories about what happened - first they said he was shot in the neck and died on the way to the hospital, then they said he’d been shot in the head and the chest, and then video started coming out that showed he’d been captured, and as I said, beaten and maybe stabbed, and his corpse dragged around in the street. This is another reason there will be an investigation. If they find evidence he died in a crossfire when his people attacked the rebels who’d captured him, then that’s fine. But it looks a great deal like he was executed after being captured. There was an autopsy and it ought to be able to determine that.
“Shariah” means a lot of different things. Virtually every country in the Middle East has some element of Shariah in the legal system, including Israel, and none are remotely as odious as the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan except for Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Iran.