The values of due process

Positively the last city in Libya where Colonel Gaddafi would be welcome would be Misrata – comprehensively pounded by his forces during several weeks of bloody siege earlier this year, writes Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson.

So it’s not without irony that – if the NTC is right – the colonel, or his body, is now in some part of that coastal city left untouched by the earlier destruction.

Various sources say he is either injured or dead. At least one photograph apparently shows him being arrested covered in blood, but his eyes open, apparently alive.

When the new minister of information stopped me in the street in Tripoli earlier this year, he insisted they wanted to arrest the colonel for him to face due judicial process.

He was insistent this would be better for the country than a scenario like Osama bin Laden and, in particular, Uday Hussein the son of Saddam who was killed in a showdown with US troops, which he explicitly told me were not in the interests of justice or the interests of the country.