For more than three minutes, you see a mob of enraged men toss Moammar Gadhafi around like a broken mannequin.
His body and face bloody, his black bushy hair a crazy mess, the 69-year-old is pummeled. His shirt is ripped open to reveal a pudgy belly.
The cell phone capturing the scene focuses on a gulf of red spreading across the Libyan dictator’s backside as someone stabs him in the rear with a bayonet.
It didn’t take long before the video was uploaded to the Internet, and the world’s news organizations were broadcasting it.
The end of the eight-month uprising in 2011, inspired by the toppling of regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, seemed to have come to a grotesque end on October 20.
It’s still not officially clear how Gadhafi died because there’s never been a formal investigation, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday in a 50-page report that details his death and the events leading up to it.
The rights group has obtained witness accounts and examined amateur videos shot with cell phones. One of the famous images captured on the day the mob got Gadhafi shows a young man holding a golden pistol triumphantly in the air as he’s cheered.
A storyline heavily repeated in the media is that the fallen dictator was shot in the head with his own gilded weapon.
The killing of Gadhafi and the fall of his Libya is a dramatic story, but it’s missing one very important part.
The rights group says the militiamen who ravaged Gadhafi and captured, tortured and killed his loyalists are possibly responsible for war crimes because killing someone in detention is recognized as such under international law.
HRW lambastes Libya’s current transitional government, saying it has taken no serious steps in investigating or prosecuting anti-Gadhafi militias.
If Libya is going to truly rid itself of violence and extremists — a timely demand considering last month’s U.S. consulate attack — justice, the group believes, must be meted out on all sides.
In February 2011, protesters took to the streets in Libya. They demanded peacefully that Gadhafi step down. His 42 years of hardline rule had to end.
A man who rarely embraced reality, Gadhafi retorted, “All my people…love me.”
As rallies continued, Gadhafi responded by ordering his forces to fire into the crowds. The movement descended into a violent uprising that dragged on for months.
By March, the opposition gained a foothold in the city of Benghazi. In response, Gadhafi’s forces closed in on the city.
At the United Nations, the Security Council passed a resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized the use of “all necessary measures” — except an occupation — to protect civilians from the violence raging in their country.
In August, as Tripoli looked ever more fragile, Gadhafi, his crew and his sons jumped into cars and sped off in various directions.
Khamis Gadhafi, active in his father’s regime, was killed in a NATO airstrike as he tried to skip town.
Another son, Saif al-Islam, managed to make his way to the Misrata suburb of Bani Walid, surrounded by desert.
Al-Islam later told Human Rights Watch that a NATO airstrike had left him mildly wounded. He was captured in November near Libya’s border.
National security adviser Mutassim Gadhafi, another son, made it safely to Sirte, his father’s hometown.
That’s where the dictator and his crew headed, also.
Senior security adviser Mansour Dhao was in tow, he told Human Rights Watch, as well as Gadhafi’s personal guard, driver and a bunch of other bodyguards.
Libya’s intelligence chief was there, but only briefly, because he was dispatched hundreds of miles to the south of Sirte. His job? He had to tell Khamis’ mother that her son was dead.
