the BURIAL OF OMAR AL MUKHTAR
As told by Dr Faraj Najem, Director of the Omar Al Mukhtar Mausoleum, Benghazi.
After the execution of Omar al Mukhtar at the Soluq concentration camp on the morning of Wednesday 16th September 1931, his body was immediately removed from the scaffold and taken to a the local muslim cemetery in the city of Benghazi, some 50 kilometers from Soluq, where under the orders of Rudolfo Graziani he was buried in an unmarked grave. The whereabouts of his remains were unknown until 1941, when Libya entered WW2, and a local man who had actually interred Omar Al Mukhtar came forth and revealed the location of the burial site.
The Tomb of Omar Al Mukhtar circa 1951. Creative Commons, Wikimedia
Original Burial Site of Omar Al Mukhtar, 1960
Al Mukhtar's body remained at the original burial site until 1960, when Libya gained its independence and the Governor of Cyrenaica decided to erect a mausoleum to honour Al Mukhtar. On the 7th August 1960, Al Mukhtar’s remains were exhumed and transported to the Libyan parliament where a funeral prayer was read over his remains. His body was then driven through the streets of Benghazi in an official procession, with his coffin draped with the Sanussi flag, which was a symbol of Jihad and was at the same time the official flag of Cyrenaica.
State Funeral of Omar Al Mukhtar, 1960
Omar Al Mukhtar's remains were then carried by his closest ‘brothers in arms’ and members of his family, into the mausoleum, where a ceremony took place and Hussein Maziq, Governor of Cyrenaica, who had been the main patron of the construction of the mausoleum, delivered a speech. Bashir Maghribi, one of the foremost civil pioneers who had lobbied for the creation of the mausoleum, also read a poem for the occasion.
State Funeral of Omar Al Mukhtar, 1960, right and below.
Hussein Maziq, Governor of Cyrenaica, delivers speech to mark Omar Al Mukhtar’s interrment in the Mausoleum, 1960.
Gaddafi delivers post-coup speech before the mausoleum of Omar Al Mukhtar.
On the 13th September 1968, the mausoleum was visited by the then Lieutenant Muamar Gaddafi, and two of his colleagues. He wrote the following in the visitors book - ‘We visited the mausoleum and were overcome with national pride for those Arab Heroes’. Just over a year later, on the 16th September 1969, the first official declaration of Muammar Gaddafi's coup, and overthrow of King Idris of Libya, was broadcast from the steps of the mausoleum, which showed Gaddafi's then reverence to Al Mukhtar. Ten years later, in 1979, in the presence of many Arab leaders, he again celebrated the tenth anniversary of the coup, at the mausoleum.
However, on the 16th September 1981, Gaddafi decided to remove Al Mukhtar's remains from his mausoleum in Benghazi and return them to Soluq. The presidents of Algeria, Syria, Yemen and Palestine were amongst the dignitaries who attended this transference.
Gaddafi Era. Tomb of Omar Al Mukhtar, Soluq, Post 1981.
Nineteen years later, in the early hours of Saturday 22nd July 2000, Muammar Gaddafi ordered and followed through with the destruction of Omar Al Mukhtar's Benghazi Mausoleum. Until now, there is still no logical explanation for this decision, other than his becoming resentful of the peoples love and respect for Omar Al Mukhtar.
Following the Libyan revolution on the 17th February 2011, and the subsequent overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi and his government, an official committee was set up on the 23rd April 2011 to rebuild the destroyed mausoleum. However, intimidation by extremist factions brought the project to a halt.
At present, the remains of Omar al Mukhtar are still at Soluq. However, in 2020, the construction of a new mausoleum was commenced to honour Omar Al Mukhtar.
The destruction of Omar Al Mukhtar’s Mausoleum in July 2000.