Gaddafi had been hiding in Sirte for months. After the fall of Tripoli to opposition forces in August 2011, he had fled the capital in a small convoy on the same day, while his son Mutassim followed separately. While Libya's prime minister told the press that Gaddafi was believed to be in the southern desert, rebuilding his power among loyal tribes, the former dictator was in fact holed up in buildings across Sirte with heavily armed loyalists, increasingly delusional according to those around him. Mansour Dhao, his security chief and member of his inner circle, said Gaddafi complained constantly about the lack of electricity and water. Advisers who urged him to flee the country were ignored. The man who had once styled himself the "King of Kings of Africa" refused to accept that his reign was over.

After the NATO strikes tore the convoy apart, Gaddafi's son Mutassim persuaded his father to move. The group belly-crawled to a sand berm and then through two drainage pipes, setting up a defensive position, according to a United Nations report published in March 2012. A separate account from the same report described Gaddafi being wounded by a grenade fragment thrown by one of his own men, which bounced off a wall and shredded his flak jacket, leaving him bleeding from the left temple. When rebel fighters approached the pipe and ordered him out, he emerged slowly. Videos circulated worldwide show what happened next: fighters dragging Gaddafi across the ground, beating him, chanting. He can be heard saying, "God forbids this" and "Do you know right from wrong?" A senior NTC official later stated that no order had been given to execute him. But Gaddafi was shot in the head and abdomen. His body was taken to Misrata.

The interim Libyan authorities decided to keep Gaddafi's body on public display. NTC oil minister Ali Tarhouni explained it simply: to make sure everybody knew he was dead. The body was placed in an industrial freezer in Misrata, and for four days Libyans traveled hundreds of kilometers to see it with their own eyes. A reporter who examined the wounds observed gunshot residue consistent with shots fired at close range. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an independent autopsy and a formal investigation into the circumstances of the death. The NTC rejected an autopsy but promised its own inquiry. On 25 October, the body was buried in a secret desert grave alongside those of Mutassim and army chief Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr. A fatwa declared that Gaddafi should not be buried in Muslim cemeteries or in any known location, to prevent his grave from becoming a site of sedition.

The killing divided global opinion sharply. Western leaders largely welcomed the news as a turning point for Libya. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a candid moment caught on camera, quipped, "We came. We saw. He died" -- a variant of Caesar's famous phrase that captured the unsettling ease with which the moment was received. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague expressed disappointment that Gaddafi had not been brought back alive to face trial. Gaddafi's allies reacted with fury: Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez called it an assassination, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega termed it a crime. Perhaps the most consequential reaction came from Vladimir Putin, who, according to a senior American diplomat, watched video of Gaddafi's final moments three times and was profoundly appalled. Analysts would later point to this event as a factor shaping Putin's deepening distrust of Western intervention. The killing rippled outward through the Arab Spring, intensifying protests in Syria and Yemen even as it raised an uncomfortable question: what kind of justice does a revolution deliver?

Omran Shaban, the young Misrata fighter who pulled Gaddafi from the drainage pipe and posed with his golden pistol, became briefly famous. Within a year, he was captured by pro-Gaddafi loyalists in Bani Walid, paralyzed, and severely tortured. Libya's interim president secured his release, but Shaban died of his injuries in France. His fate illustrated a pattern that the killing of Gaddafi did little to break. Human Rights Watch later revealed evidence of mass killings at the site of Gaddafi's death. The NTC, which had declared Libya liberated three days after the killing, promised democracy. Instead, the country spiraled into a second civil war. Sirte itself, the city where Gaddafi made his last stand, would fall to the Islamic State in 2015. The drainage pipe beneath a Libyan road became a symbol not of liberation, but of the violent ambiguity that defines so many revolutions.