Summary execution was the best way for Gaddafi to go

SO Colonel Gaddafi, like poor old William the footman in Downton Abbey last week, appears to have died from his wounds. The grisly photographs certainly look like him. No doubt the modern equivalent of the wooden stake through the heart, a DNA sample, will provide confirmation soon enough.
According to the National Transitional Council (NTC), Gaddafi was trying to do a bunk from his besieged hometown of Sirte - King Rat leaving the sinking ship. NTC forces came upon him and his entourage hiding from a Nato airstrike in a drain.

The official version is that "he died of wounds sustained during capture".

"Shot out of hand after being captured" would be more accurate, but who are we to quibble with the Libyan fighters in at the kill. Exit Tyrannus, but not quite the heroic exit he had promised.

There will be those who would have preferred to see him brought to justice, either in Libya or in The Hague. As more information comes out it looks as if Gaddafi allowed himself to be taken alive. Perhaps he was hoping for his day in court. But it’s better this way.

The fact that Gaddafi and at least one of his gruesome sons, Mutassim, the one with long hair and shiny suits, were killed yesterday may go some way to assuaging the revenge instinct of those Libyans who suffered under his rule.

Controlling this perfectly natural desire to revenge family and friends who suffered imprisonment, beatings, torture, rape or death at the hands of Gaddafi’s henchmen over the years will be vital if the country is to have a future based on the rule of law. Otherwise a murderous regime will merely have been replaced with a murderous lynch mob.

Gaddafi was a nasty piece of work. Nevertheless, as Nato found out to its surprise early in the campaign, he was hugely popular in parts of the country. His erstwhile supporters have nowhere else to go and reconciling them to the new Libya will be essential to the country’s future stability.

In any case, some of them will be ordinary people who had little choice but to go along with the regime. Integrating all but the most fanatical and brutal will be an essential task for the National Transitional Council.

This is always difficult after internecine conflict. It is going to be particularly difficult in a country split on regional, religious and clan-kinship lines. As Hillary Clinton said while visiting Tripoli on Sunday, "Now for the hard part".

It can happen. It has happened in the past. Charles II set the benchmark in 1660. At his insistence the first business of parliament after the Restoration was to pass an 'Act of Free and ·