Gaddafi in Batam (Feb26)

 

The Batam Post carried the same pictures & headlines.

         KHADAFI

           TEWAS

The unavailing pleading for life was quoted: Don't shoot, don't shoot.

The main picture was from the files of the chieftain of former times, in the rich robes when he would pitch his famous tents in foreign capitals. Finally, in the end, similar to Saddam a few years before, the deposed leader was reportedly caught in a sewer.

That picture too featured in the Batam Post, the wall of the drain scrawled with graffiti celebrating the event. One of the English newspapers turned the tyrant into a rodent.

The main photo was of the corpse. The dreadful dictator brought to account for all his crimes: bloodied, shaggy-haired carcass, with twisted mouth.

In Indonesia—in the local newspaper on the island of Batam at least—there was a different cropping of the shot, one that helped set the scene on the outskirts of Sirte, where Gaddafi was cornered.

In the earlier publications it was a close focus on the torso, the head and rictus tightly framed, with an odd angle somehow, as if the body was laid on a rise of ground. 

For the Batam Post the slightly wider shot revealed the staging that had been involved. Alongside the corpse in the Batam Post, on the left, a man's jeans-clad leg was bent, the knee pointing at the camera. On the thigh blood had left a smear, the same as on the waistband of the white t-shirt.

The dying Gaddafi had leaked over one of the killers.

Framing the body on the other side, on the right, was a left arm.

Gaddafi's body was wedged against one of his captors, the dead weight propped at an angle for the camera. The scoop for the news-services fetching a good price.

The man in jeans & tee, from an opposing tribe, no doubt, was happy to cradle the old monster in his lap. A tale to adapt for the grandchildren.

One of the news outlets in Oz anticipated cheaper petrol prices.