BENGHAZI: Libya's new rulers declared the country freed from Muammar Gaddafi's 42 years of one-man rule Sunday, saying the "Pharaoh of the times" was in history's garbage bin and a future of democracy and reconciliation beckoned.
As thousands gathered in Benghazi to hear authorities announce "liberation," Gaddafi's rotting body remained unburied and on show in Misrata, a situation that may vex some Muslims for whom rapid burial of the dead is a religious duty.
His son Saadi, now in Niger, said he was outraged by the murders of his father and brother Mo'tassim.
There was no direct reference at the Benghazi celebrations to what some outsiders see as Misrata's ghoulish display.
In a speech, National Transitional Council (NTC) chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil renewed an earlier promise to uphold Islamic law.
"All the martyrs, the civilians and the army had waited for this moment. But now they are in the best of places ... eternal heaven," he said, shaking hands with supporters.
Some fear Jalil, a mild-mannered former justice minister, will find it hard to impose his will on his fractious revolutionary alliance, pointing to Misrata's insistence on displaying Gaddafi's body and that of Mo'tassim and to the lack of a clear account about how they met their end.
There is international disquiet about increasingly graphic and disturbing images on the Internet of abuse of a body that appears to be Gaddafi's following his capture and the fall of his hometown of Sirte Thursday.
But the immediate reaction to Sunday's announcement was jubilation.
"We are the Libyans. We have shown you who we are Gaddafi, you Pharaoh of the times. You have fallen into the garbage bin of history," said lawyer Abdel Rahman el-Qeesy, who announced the creation of a new government portfolio to deal with victims of the conflict.
"We declare to the whole world that we have liberated our beloved country, with its cities, villages, hilltops, mountains, deserts and skies," said an official who opened the ceremony in Benghazi, the place where the uprising erupted in February and which has been the headquarters for the NTC.
Cheering crowds waved the tri-color flag. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations would help build a new Libya. U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed the declaration of liberation
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