The death of a tyrant

The BBC's coverage of the death of Colonel Gaddafi has been rather odd. The BBC have been forced to report that Gadaffi was a tyrant and ran a less than pleasant regime but this is at odds with their previous reporting of him as some sort of freedom fighter, standing up to the United States and the victim of Western aggression. The BBC instinctively support the United Nations, as they tend to support most supra-national bodies (although not NATO), and so I am not surprised to note that they have yet to investigate how it was that the country run by a tyrant like Gaddafi was elected to its Human Rights Council last year, to the Security Council in 2008-2009, and as General Assembly president in 2009. The BBC are also obsessively reporting the claims (almost certainly true) that Gadaffi was shot in the head after being captured and publicising the calls for an investigation. I do not remember the BBC being that bothered by calls for investigations into the numerous evils perpetrated by Gadaffi's regime, such a the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, the massacre of 1,270 prisoners at Abu Salim Prison or the many other massacres carried out on Gadaffi's instructions since he started his rule of terror.

The BBC have also not been that interested in investigating Gadaffi's support for international terrorists including the IRA. On that subject it would be interesting to know if Martin McGuinness ever had any contact with Colonel Gadaffi during the period that Libya was supplying weapons to the IRA, weapons that were used to kill British soldiers and civilians.

Gadaffi was a very nasty man who ruled by the use of force and terror and was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people including, those killed using weapons supplied by him, on British soil. Excuse me if I don't weap a tear because a Libyan decided that a bullet in the head was a reasonable way of ending his life.