London, Oct 1: A French secret serviceman shot dead Libya's former strongman Col Muammar Gaddafi and not a lynch mob of rebels as he lay trapped and cornered in a sewage pipe in his home town of Sirte, The Daily Mail reported.
The French secret agent is said to have infiltrated a violent mob which had encircled the Libyan leader on October 20, 2011, in a sewage pipe in his home town, and shot him in the head, the newspaper report says.
Quoting diplomatic sources in the North African capital, the Mail said the motive apparently was to stop Gaddafi being interrogated about his highly suspicious links with Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the President of France at that time.
The paper said Sarkozy who once welcomed Gaddafi as the "Brother leader" during a state visit to Paris was said to have received millions of dollars from the Libyan despot to fund his election campaign in 2007.
Sarkozy, the paper said, was not the only Western leader to have close links with Gaddafi and claimed that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Gaddafi regularly and was helping to facilitate multi-billion pounds business deals.
