Muammar Gaddafi will commit suicide the way Adolf Hitler did at the end of World War II rather than surrender or flee, a former Libyan cabinet minister told a Swedish newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.
"Gaddafi's days are numbered. He will do what Hitler did -- he will take his own life," former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohammed Abd al-Jalil told Expressen in an interview in al-Bayda.
Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin in April 1945 as he witnessed the disintegration of the Nazi German Empire.
Jalil resigned this week in protest at violence used by the government against demonstrators opposed to Gaddafi. The leader is battling to preserve his 41-year rule.
In the same interview, part of which were released on Wednesday, Jalil said he had proof Gaddafi gave the order for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, saying he had proof to back up his accusations.
Libyan national Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was in 2001 convicted of the bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, but he was freed in August 2009 after doctors said he was suffering from terminal cancer.
In his interview, the former minister also endorsed claims that Gaddafi had hired mercenaries from other parts of Africa who witnesses have said are at the forefront of the crackdown designed to shore up his rule.
"I knew that the regime had mercenaries before the uprising. The government decided in several meetings to grant citizenship to the (mercenaries) from Chad and Niger. That was something that I objected to and that is documented," he told the paper.