© Agence France-Presse/Marco Longari Libyan women celebrate in the streets of Tripoli following news of Muammar Gaddafi's capture and death.
Libya's new rulers declared the country freed from Muammar Gaddafi's 42 years of one-man rule Sunday, saying the "Pharaoh of the times" was now in history's garbage bin and a future of democracy and postwar reconciliation beckoned.
But as thousands gathered in the second city Benghazi to hear authorities announce "liberation,"
Gaddafi's rotting body remained unburied and on show to locals wearing masks against the stench in a cold store in Misrata, a situation that may vex some Muslims for whom rapid burial of the dead is a duty.
There was no direct reference to what some outsiders saw as Misrata's ghoulish display in a speech by National Transitional Council (NTC) chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who kneeled in prayer after taking the podium in Benghazi.
He renewed an earlier promise to uphold Islamic law.
"All the martyrs, the civilians and the army had waited for this moment. But now they are in the best of places ... eternal heaven," he said, shaking hands with supporters.
Some fear Jalil, a mild-mannered former justice minister, will find it hard to impose his will on his fractious revolutionary alliance, pointing to Misrata's insistence on displaying Gaddafi's body and that of his son Mo'tassim and to the lack of a clear account about how they met their end.
There is international disquiet about increasingly graphic and disturbing images on the Internet of abuse of a body that appears to be Gaddafi's following his capture and the fall of his hometown of Sirte Thursday.
Comment: So the U.S.'s version of Peace and Reconciliation has something to do with Carpet Bombing and Drone Wars?