Quotes of the Day

Libya's interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told TIME late Thursday night that Gaddafi had been killed in cross-fire between rebels and loyalist fighters while the rebels in Gaddafi's birthplace of Sirt were attempting to carry the wounded colonel to an ambulance. Jibril also said that Gaddafi did not resist arrest, even though he was carrying a small pistol in his holster. "There was cross-fire and he was shot while they were carrying him to a truck," Jibril said, in a sit-down interview with TIME.

According to Jibril, Gaddafi was cornered while hiding in a large sewage pipe in Sirt, as rebels closed in on the last bit of disputed territory in the city, about 230 miles east of Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast. "He did not resist, although he had a small pistol," Jibril says. He was shot once in the arm, and then, as fighters carried him to the ambulance, a fierce fire-fight broke out between the warring sides. Gaddafi was killed in that, Jibril said, although he did not know which side had fired the fatal shot. According to the autopsy report, Gaddafi was wearing a wig. "That was a real surprise to me," says Jibril, who is the number two figure in the rebels' National Transitional Council.

How Gaddafi was injured in the first place has yet to be clarified. Reuters reported that his convoy had attempted to escape from besieged Sirt when it was hit by either a NATO jet or helicopter, which killed many if not most of his escort. The dazed and bloodied Gaddafi then hid in a drainage pipe with his surviving guards until they were found by fighters associated with the interim government.

Gaddafi will be buried in Misratah in a religious ceremony on Friday, according to Jibril — a break with Muslim tradition, which generally dictates that the dead are buried the same day, before sundown. The National Transitional Council's Finance and Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni had sped to Misratah late Thursday afternoon, in order to view Gaddafi's body and to discuss how to bury him. Jibril says NTC officials believed it would be unwise to bring Gaddafi to the capital. "I don't think it would have been wise for the body to have been brought to Tripoli where there is so much anger and bitterness," Jibril said, adding, "It is better for the respect of the body" for Gaddafi's body to be buried elsewhere.

If the details are correct in Jibril's account — which he said were gleaned from coroner and eyewitness reports in Sirt and nearby Misratah — it would mean that the rebel fighters intended to hand over Gaddafi alive. That would have adhered to the wishes of Western governments, who in recent months have expressed the hope that Gaddafi would be tried in an international court. Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam were both indicted by the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, for crimes against humanity, for allegedly having ordered their security forces to kill unarmed protesters in easern Libya in February, when the revolt began.

As hundreds of thousands of Libyans poured into the streets on Thursday, ecstatically rejoicing Gaddafi's death, the details of his demise seemed almost an afterthought. In interviews around Tripoli over the past two days, many Libyans said they hoped Gaddafi would be killed, or at the very least tried in Libya, where he almost certainly would have received a death sentence.

How Gaddafi died, Jibril said in the interview, "for Libyan people, it does not matter, so long as he vanishes from the scene." However, Jibril, a U.S.-educated economist, said he himself felt disappointed that Gaddafi would not face his day in court. His death, he says, "means a lot. It was a very, very long nightmare. The Libyan people were deprived of real development."

Looking drawn and thin, Jibril sat slumped in an armchair, clearly fatigued. One day after telling a public meeting of journalists and Libyan officials that he was resigning as Prime Minister, he told TIME that he needed medical treatment though he did not indicate what kind. Instead of running Libya's hugely complex transition to democracy, he said he would instead throw his energies into rebuilding "civil organizations," focusing on women and education.

There are other urgent needs too, Jibril says. Chief among them now, for the new government, is piecing together a united country, which has been battered by decades of dictatorship and an eight-month civil war. Disparate armed militias, representing Libya's east and west, have said they will insist on key portfolios within the new government as reward for their role in the war.

In addition, Jibril said the new government will have to ward off any temptation by Libyans to exact revenge on Gaddafi's old loyalists, after decades of repression. He conceded that it might not be easy. "There must be transitional justice," he says. "People should not resort to reprisals, they must go the courts. If your property has been confiscated under Gaddafi, if someone in your family has been killed, or been imprisoned, let justice take its course."

• Vivienne Walt / Tripoli
• Mahmoud Jibril provides details of Gaddafi's last moments and talks about the difficulties of the post-Gaddafi era, which has just begun