Gaddafi family to sue NATO, lawyer says.

The family of the late Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi plans to file a lawsuit against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the role played by the Atlantic alliance in the assassination of the former ruler, a lawyer for the Gaddafi family said on Wednesday.

Gaddafi, 69, was shot in the head last Thursday after Libyan interim government forces stormed the city of Sirte. The circumstances of Gaddafi's death are still unclear, but it has been confirmed that a French NATO fighter jet attacked the convoy in which the former ruler was fleeing.

Marcel Ceccaldi, a French lawyer who previously worked for the Gaddafi regime and now represents the Gaddafi family, said a legal complaint will be filed with the ICC, based in The Hague. According to Ceccaldi, the NATO attack was an episode that led to the assassination of the former ruler hours later, reports the French news agency AFP.

"The murder of someone protected by the Geneva Convention is defined as a war crime according to Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC," said Ceccaldi. He does not know when the action will be filed, but said it should target both NATO's executive bodies and the leaders of the countries in the Atlantic alliance.

"The assassination of Gaddafi shows that the objective of NATO and its member states was not to protect Libyan civilians, but to overthrow the regime," said Ceccaldi.

Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) has announced an investigation into Gaddafi's death. This information comes from Dow Jones.