GlobalPost Flashback: Gaddafi’s capture and death (VIDEO)
Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters stand outside drainage pipes where ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was captured, as the body of a loyalist lies on the ground, in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte on October 20, 2011.
WARNING: Some images below are particularly graphic and upsetting.
In the final stages of the Libyan rebellion two years ago, GlobalPost's senior correspondent Tracey Shelton traveled with Libya's rebels as they hunted down Col. Muammar Gaddafi, a famously flamboyant dictator who had ruled the country for 42 years.
In a moment that mixed high drama and historic import with revulsion, the rebels finally caught up with Libya's then-leader.
What happened next in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte was as brutal as it was shocking.
The former dictator was pulled from a drainpipe, beaten and — as subsequent video analysis showed — sodomized by his former subjects.
He later died in their captivity.
Shelton was the first reporter on the scene, and she obtained exclusive video of this event:
WARNING: Extremely graphic
GlobalPost's senior video producer Solana Pyne offered this breakdown of the capture:
Here is a frame by frame look at the attack that shows the attempt to sodomize Gaddafi.
WARNING: Extremely graphic
How has Libya changed in the two years since these dramatic events? Here's Tracey's report that she filed this morning from Tripoli.
As for the current politics and economics of Libya, GlobalPost's foreign affairs columnist Michael Moran offered this sharp analysis.