adminA private jet flew the corpse of the 22-year-old Omran Shaaban to the coastal city of Misrata on Tuesday where his family, friends and well-wishers were waiting.
He had shot to fame last year with several photographs and videos showing him grabbing Gaddafi at the moment of his capture on 20 October 2011, in Sirte, before he was killed.
Gaddafi was killed later that day by revolutionary fighters.
The death of Shaaban, who had been hospitalised in France, raises the prospect of even more violence and score-settling.
The newly elected National Congress has authorised police and the army to use force if necessary to apprehend those who abducted Shaaban and three companions in July near the town of Bani Walid.
Libya is battling lingering pockets of support for the old regime, and its government has been unable to rein in armed militias in a country rife with weapons.
Earlier this month, a demonstration at the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi turned violent, killing four Americans, including the US ambassador.
Shaaban was praised as a “dutiful martyr” by the National Congress, although his family says he never received a promised reward of 1 million
Libyan dinars ($800 000) for capturing Gaddafi.
The Libyan government has said it will honour Shaaban with a funeral befitting a hero.
“All the accusations are that Gaddafi loyalists were behind his kidnapping and torture,” Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid reported from Benghazi yesterday.
“His funeral procession on Tuesday night was an impressive affair. The coffin, wrapped in the national flag, was taken to a sports stadium in Misrata where thousands of people paid their last respects.”
Photos on social media websites showed a wooden coffin with a glass window that revealed Shaaban’s face, with white gauze covering his head.
In the capital, Tripoli, several hundred protesters gathered outside the headquarters of the National Congress to demand that the government avenge Shaaban’s death.
Shaaban’s family said that he and three friends had been en route home to Misrata from a vacation in July when they were attacked by armed men in an area called el-Shimekh, near Bani Walid.
Shaaban and his friends, who like many Libyans were armed, fired back, the family said. — AP
Online Reporter