Muammar Qaddafi speaking in Tripoli last March. (Getty)

A group of activists including City Councilman Charles Barron gathered in Bed Stuy Monday night to mourn the loss of the late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed by rebels October 20. Qaddafi's death came after a NATO-backed revolution that ended his 42 year regime. Though Qaddafi was widely vilified for killing and torturing enemies during his reign, the group of mourners who eulogized him in Brooklyn last night hailed him as an African hero.

The Brooklyn Ink filed a dispatch from the Qaddafi event, which was held at a Nostrand Avenue jazz restaurant called Sistas' Place. It was organized by the "December 12th Movement," an anti-police brutality organization founded by the late Brooklyn community leader Sonny Carson. Speakers included Councilman Barron, members of the African Diaspora for Democracy and Development and Viola Plummer, who the Ink accurately described as, "a former City Council aide fired in 2007 after threatening the assassination of Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr.

“Out there, they don’t know that Qaddafi was our brother. … People say ‘Didn’t he kill all those people?’ I say, ‘I don’t know anything. The man was a freedom fighter,” Councilman Barron said exemplifying the pro-Qaddafi sentiment expressed at the event.

In January, members of the December 12th movement plan to hold a tribunal that will "put NATO on trial" for providing military support to the Libyan revolution, but they don't want to stop there. Last night in Brooklyn, Ms. Plummer encouraged members of the crowd to sign a petition calling for leaders responsible for Qaddafi's death to be put on trial in the International Criminal Court at The Hague.