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Libya: London-based photographer killed by Gaddafi troops

21 May 2011 00:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. A London-based photographer who has been missing in Libya for over a month was shot dead on the first day by government troops yet Col Muammar Gaddafi continued to tell his family he was alive, APA reports quoting â€œThe Telegraphâ€.
Family, friends and colleagues in Anton Hammerlâ€™s home country of South Africa and elsewhere around the world have held regular candlelit vigils to pray for his safe release.
The South African government says it was given repeated assurances by Col Gaddafi himself that the 41-year-old married father of two young sons was alive and would be released along with three other journalists detained on April 5.
But when the three were released this week, they rang Mr Hammerlâ€™s wife Penny Sukhraj to tell her that he had been shot in the stomach during an ambush by pro-Gaddafi forces in the desert outside Brega. They said the nature of his injury meant he could not have survived without medical help and his body is thought to have been left in the desert.
On Friday, the family released a statement in which they condemned the "intolerable cruelty" of the disgraced Libyan leader in giving them false hope that Mr Hammerl would come home.
"From the moment Anton disappeared in Libya we have lived in hope as the Libyan officials assured us that they had Anton," they said.
"It is intolerably cruel that Gaddafi loyalists have known Antonâ€™s fate all along and chose to cover it up. Words are simply not enough to describe the unbelievable trauma the Hammerl family is going through."
Mr Hammerl, who held dual South African and Austrian citizenship and had lived in Britain for five years, was working as a freelance photographer in Libya. He has two sons, aged 14 weeks and seven years.
James Foley, an American reporter for GlobalPost who was one of those freed, said the group had been travelling with a rebel convoy when they came under fire from pro-Gaddafi forces on the outskirts of the strategic oil town of Brega.
"It all happened in a split second. We thought we were in the crossfire. But, eventually, we realised they were shooting at us. You could see and hear the bullets hitting the ground near us," he said.
Mr Hammerl, who was closest to the fighting, cried out for help, then eventually grew silent, he said. The three other journalists surrendered and were held in a series of detention centres in Tripoli.
Mr Foley said they feared they would put themselves in danger if they tried to communicate the news of Mr Hammerlâ€™s death from captivity.
South African President Jacob Zuma has been criticised for not bringing up the issue of Mr Hammerl with Col Gaddafi on a visit to Tripoli last month.
South Africa has been a close ally of Libya and Mr Zuma spoke out against the Nato air strikes on his regime.
South Africaâ€™s foreign minister said she had continually sought, and received, reassurances about his wellbeing including from Col Gaddafi himself.
"We kept getting reassured at the highest level that he was alive until his colleagues were released and shared the information," Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said.
"Mr. Hammerlâ€™s death is a very unfortunate act, and the government and the people of South Africa condemn the perpetrators of this heinous action."
She said that South Africa, together with Austria, would now try to bring Mr Hammerlâ€™s body home. He is the fifth journalist to die since the Libyan uprising began in February.