Gaddafi's revenge extends beyond death

By Anne-Beatrice Clasmann Feb 4, 2012, 2:01 GMT

Tripoli - It is unusually cold in this section of Tripoli's main hospital - cold even for a morgue.

Two men who keep track of the morgue's bodies being brought in and taken out are sitting in a small office at the entrance, wearing thick winter jackets to keep out the cold.

One wall contains cooled metal boxes holding bodies that have yet to be identified. Some of boxes carry sheets of paper written in ballpoint, giving details of the place and time the body was found.

Once identified, it is rare for a body to stay here for long, given that Islamic practice is to wash and bury the dead as quickly as possible.

To the left of the 18 boxes, a body is lying, covered with a blanket.

And next to a second stretcher, the small figure of a weeping woman is bending over the body of her daughter, shrouded in a white sheet.

Only the face is visible. The mother and her young son have come to identify the body and to take it away for burial.

The daughter died on the street, struck by a stray bullet fired by a man shooting around wildly without any apparent reason.

The mother and her son have no idea what lies behind the steel door painted in dark colours 10 metres away to the rear of the building.

This is where bodies lie of people Libya's late dictator Moamer Gaddafi had liquidated during his 42-year rule.

Hospital workers, at least, believe them to be bodies of Gaddafi's enemies and of their relatives, who simply disappeared.

Before Gaddafi's flight from Tripoli in August and death two months later in Sirte, the bodies of some of his victims were allegedly kept on the hospital grounds.

No one dared to talk about them. The men guarding the cold rooms of the morgue remained silent about their duties, according to people who worked in the hospital at the time.

Rebel troops broke down the doors in October, finding the bodies of 16 men and a baby. A forensic expert later estimated that some of them had died more than 25 years ago.

Only one of the bodies has been identified thus far, morgue employees say. He is Mohammed Hashim al-Chodeiri, who was killed in 1984, according to his relatives.

The morgue is called Dar al-Rahma - House of Compassion.

But months after the death of the their tormenter, Moamer Gaddafi, a final act of compassion for these lost lives will be years in coming.