69-year-old Gaddafi pleaded for mercy when rebels captured him while he was trying to flee from a drain where he was hiding in Sirte, the last major bastion of resistance two months after the regime fell in August. The BBC reported that a rebel fighter claimed that Gaddafi was hiding in a hole in the centre of the city and pleaded "don`t shoot".
The man brandished a golden pistol he took off the former Libyan leader, who was lying dead nearby. Gaddafi`s heavy-handed approach to quelling the protests against his regime was characterized by the International Federation for Human Rights as a strategy of scorched earth.
The UN referred the massacres of unarmed civilians to the International Criminal Court. The ICC issued arrest warrants on June 27, 2011 for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and his brother-in-law Abdullah al-Senussi, head of state security for charges, concerning crimes against humanity committed against political opponents.