@TriciaMcDaidTricia McDaid
Fighting rages in Sirte; Gadhafi's son's arrest unconfirmed #cnnedition.cnn.com/2011/10/13/wor…
Sirte, Libya (CNN) -- Libya's National Transitional Council offered no official confirmation Thursday of the arrest of Moatassim Gadhafi, one of the deposed leader's sons believed to have been captured after a four-hour firefight in Sirte.
Abdallah Naker, the head of the Tripoli Revolutionary Council, said Moatassim Gadhafi was arrested, but the National Transitional Council was not announcing it for security reasons.
Naker cited field commanders in Sirte as his sources for the arrest, but two senior council spokesmen said the report was unconfirmed and a third reportedly denied the claim.
Ali Tarhouni, Libya's interim deputy prime minister and oil minister, dismissed the importance of the arrest.
"I do not have any knowledge whether he is arrested or not, and honestly I am not really concerned about this boy, the murderer, they have no where to go, him or his father, so it is not a case that concerns me," Tarhouni said. "I care about my people and liberating the rest of the country and the oil sector and electricity sector."
According to Naker, Moatassim Gadhafi and a number of aides were captured around noon in an area considered the center of operations for forces loyal to his father, Moammar Gadhafi, the country's former leader. They were then taken to Benghazi, he said.
Gadhafi's son had been directing operations in Sirte, the hometown of his father, which has been surrounded since Tuesday night, Naker said.
However, the last vestiges of the old regime have been harder to defeat than the interim council had predicted. Anti-Gadhafi fighters used heavy weapons -- rockets and artillery -- to push back their foes Thursday.
Gadhafi lavished untold sums of money on the coastal city, trying to turn it into a pan-African capital. Now it was filled with shot-up buildings -- weeks of fighting has wrought extensive damage in Sirte and left it largely deserted.
The National Transitional Council has said it will declare liberation complete when Sirte falls. That has not happened yet, though Gadhafi's men, with their backs against the Mediterranean, appear to have few options left.
Meanwhile Thursday, Amnesty International issued a new report documenting a pattern of beatings and ill-treatment of suspected Gadhafi supporters in western Libya.
"In some cases there is clear evidence of torture in order to extract confessions or as a punishment," the report said.
The international rights group urged Libya's new leaders to make the rule of law a priority as they forge ahead to build a new nation.
"There is a real risk that without firm and immediate action, some patterns of the past might be repeated. Arbitrary arrest and torture were a hallmark of Colonel Gadhafi's rule," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
