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Gadhafi Captor Killed: Man Who Found Gadhafi Tortured and Killed

One of the men who pulled Colonel Moammar Gadhafi from a drainpipe is dead after supporters of the murdered Libyan strongman retaliated by kidnapping and torturing him.

The body of Omran Ben Shaaban was flown back to Libya by private jet on Tuesday from France, where he’d been receiving medical attention.

Shaaban had been shot, kidnapped and brutally tortured by Gadhafi supporters this summer before dying from his wounds.

Video posted online showed thousands of mourners at a Misrata Sports Stadium Tuesday night. The Libyan government said it would give the 22-year-old a funeral fit for a hero. A photo was also posted of Shaaban in wooden casket, his face visible through a glass window.

Shaaban and three friends were attacked and kidnapped by Gadhafi loyalists in July near the southern town of Bani Walid, where many ardent Gadhafi supporters still reside. Relatives told the Associated Press that Shaaban was shot twice and left paralyzed from the waist down. When Libya’s president Mohammed el-Megarif managed to get Shaaban and two of his friends released earlier this month, Shaaban was “skin and bones.”

“It was clear he was beaten a lot,” his brother Abdullah Shaaban told the Associated Press. “His entire chest was sliced with razors. His face had changed. It wasn’t my brother that I knew.”

Shaaban was then flown to France for treatment, but he succumbed to his wounds on Tuesday.

The fall of Gadhafi has resulted in the rise of independent militias and widespread lawlessness, highlighted by the deaths two weeks ago American Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans during an attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

The AP reported that Shaaban belonged to a coalition of militias called Libya Shield, sanctioned and supported by the Defense Ministry.

He reportedly never received the $800,000 reward for capturing Gadhafi last October, but his brother said Shaaban considered it his duty.

Gadhafi was found hiding in a drainage pipe near his birthplace in Sirte. He was dragged out and violently carried away during which time he was executed. Video posted by the aggregator Storyful appears to show Shaaban carrying a pistol while a bloodied Gadhafi pleads for his life.

Libya’s congress has vowed to track down Shaaban’s kidnappers. A militia commander said they would take matters into their own hands if the authorities fail.

“We will take revenge militarily, but legitimately,” Walid Ben Shaaban told Agence France-Presse. “We will give the authorities an opportunity to tackle the issue but, if they fail to act, we know how to make our move.”

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