Our old friend Gaddafi was killed sometime on the 20th October, and due to doubts over how he died, there are some who are concerned with how the future of Libya will suffer because he was potentially lynched. These concerns are ridiculous.
Of course we can agree that a lynching (or a summary execution … or whatever it was) is bad, and that a properly conducted trial would be better. But it will hardly have a great effect on the future of Libya. However Gaddafi was killed, it would seem that if the killing was done by the militia in an inappropriate way, it was almost certainly done against the wishes of the NTC.
And even if it were the case that the NTC let it be known they wouldn’t be too upset if Gaddafi kept falling down steps until he was no longer able to get up again, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Or even a sign that Libya is going to slip into a barbarous disregard for human rights.
Gaddafi was a special case – there are many Libyans with a personal reason to celebrate at Gaddafi’s death. Enough so that the percentage of those of us who believe that taking justice into our own hands is justified would cover enough people that it was pretty likely that Gaddafi would have met a bullet in the back of the head. That is not a good thing of course.
But as far as I can see, Libya does not appear to be going through the kind of convulsions that happen when neighbour starts lynching neighbour. There are plenty of people in Libya who supported the old regime, and it does not seem to be a widespread activity to put said people up against a wall. Which is a good sign – no matter what happened to Gaddafi, it would seem that Libyans want the kind of society where justice takes precedence over lynch mobs.