The body of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has been removed from the commercial freezer where it had been on display as preparations are made for his burial, a security guard said Monday.
Libyan officials had ceased allowing members of the public to view Gadhafi's body earlier in the day. For the past four days it had been housed alongside the bodies of Gadhafi's son Muatassim and a former aide at a warehouse in the battered city of Misrata.
The bodies of all three men have been removed from the site, according to Salem al-Mohandes, a security guard at the warehouse.
"Our job is finished," al-Mohandes told The associated Press. "He (Gadhafi) was transferred and the military council of Misrata took him away to an unknown location. I don't know whether they buried him or not."
The burial will likely take place Tuesday at a secret location using unmarked graves, according to local military spokesman Ibrahim Beitalmal.
Gadhafi's tribe had asked for the Libyan government to release his body to them so it can be buried, CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Martin Seemungal said Monday.
It's unclear whether their request will be granted, however.
Libyan authorities are also under pressure to investigation Gadhafi's death, Seemungal reported from Misrata. There have been conflicting reports about how he was killed while in the custody of the revolutionary forces that captured him.
Libya's interim leader said Monday that a committee will probe the circumstances of Gadhafi's death and he suggested that it may have been the despot's own loyalists who had motive to end his life last Thursday.
"Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Gadhafi will not be tried. Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption," Mustafa Abdul-Jalil told news conference held in Benghazi on Monday.
"Free Libyans wanted to keep Gadhafi in prison and humiliate him as long as possible. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him, his death was in their benefit."
Gadhafi was found hiding in a drain pipe on Thursday, when revolutionary fighters caught up with him in his hometown of Sirte. Video has proven that Gadhafi was alive at the time of his capture. But he shot in the head soon after.
The lack of clarity on the details of Gadhafi's death has put Libya under pressure from the U.S., Britain and international rights groups to determine how he was killed.
But Patrick Basham of the Washington-based Democracy Institute said that there are few Libyans who have much interest in seeing a committee spend time determining how and why Gadhafi died.
"They know what kind of a person he was and what kind of a government he ran and they're just glad to be rid of him," Basham told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel on Monday.
New York-based Human Rights Watch is also asking questions about 53 bodies that were found outside a Sirte hotel.
The victims are believed to be Gadhafi loyalists who were killed in the days before their former leader was caught.
Bullet cartridges and bloodstains found at the scene suggest the victims were slain where they were found.
"This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting, and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gadhafi fighters who consider themselves above the law," Human Rights Watch researcher Peter Bouckaert said in a statement.
"It is imperative that the transitional authorities take action to rein in these groups."
With files from The Associated Press
