“This moment is the time of our life. We’re very happy,” said Misherghi, as her young children wailed in the background and she monitored news on Facebook, CNN, Al Jazeera and a host of others. “He killed our people. He destroyed Libya. It’s been for 42 years… He’s very bad. And not to Libya, all the world.”
The end of the Khadafy regime cleared the way for a new and uncertain path for the latest Arab nation to shed a long-term ruler, but it also reopened feelings of grief and ambivalence for those who had hoped that Khadafy would be taken alive.
Many wanted him to stand trial for an indictiment in teh International Criminal Court for murders rapes and xx in the months since protests erupted in Feburayr.
In Shrewsbury, Jeannine Boulanger wanted Khadafy to reveal the names of the other she believed helped carry out the explosion in 1988 of Pan American Airways Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The attack killed 270 people, including 189 Americans, including her daughter, Nicole, then 21 and a Syracuse University theater major returning home from studying in London.
“I would much rather have had Khadafy taken alive where he could have been tried in the world court for crimes against humanity,” she said, in a telephone interview, her voice composed and straightforward. “Justice was just too swift today, as far as I was concerned.”
In the years since her daughter’s death, she and other families had pushed Congress for an investigation of the bombing, holding Pan Am responsible, testifying before Congress, to the release two years ago of the ailing bomber from Scotland on humanitarian grounds.
“It just went on and on and on,” she said. “I certainly would have preferred that Khadafy be taken alive … Death seemed too sudden and too easy for Mr. Khadafy.”
