161 Facts About Gaddafi

Gaddafi was the de facto leader of Libya from 1969 to 2011, first as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.

Gaddafi nationalized the oil industry and used the increasing state revenues to bolster the military, fund foreign revolutionaries, and implement social programs emphasizing house-building, healthcare and education projects.

Gaddafi outlined his Third International Theory that year in The Green Book.

Gaddafi transformed Libya into a new socialist state called a Jamahiriya in 1977.

Gaddafi officially adopted a symbolic role in governance but remained head of both the military and the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing dissent.

From 1999, Gaddafi shunned pan-Arabism, and encouraged pan-Africanism and rapprochement with Western nations; he was Chairperson of the African Union from 2009 to 2010.

Gaddafi's government was overthrown; he retreated to Sirte, only to be captured and killed by NTC militants.

Gaddafi is the only son of his parents and he is the youngest of four siblings.

Gaddafi's family came from a small, relatively uninfluential tribe called the Qadhadhfa, who were Arab in heritage.

Gaddafi's mother was named Aisha bin Niran, and his father, Mohammad Abdul Salam bin Hamed bin Mohammad, was known as Abu Meniar ; the latter earned a meager subsistence as a goat and camel herder.

Gaddafi's upbringing in Bedouin culture influenced his personal tastes for the rest of his life; he preferred the desert over the city and would retreat there to meditate.

From childhood, Gaddafi was aware of the involvement of European colonial powers in Libya; his nation was occupied by Italy, and during the North African Campaign of the Second World War it witnessed conflict between Italian and British forces.

Gaddafi was popular at this school; some friends made there received significant jobs in his later administration, most notably his best friend, Abdul Salam Jalloud.

Many teachers at Sabha were Egyptian, and for the first time, Gaddafi had access to pan-Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts, especially the Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs.

Gaddafi admired the political changes implemented in the Arab Republic of Egypt under his hero, President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Gaddafi was influenced by Nasser's book, Philosophy of the Revolution, which outlined how to initiate a coup.

Gaddafi read voraciously on the subjects of Nasser and the French Revolution of 1789, as well as the works of the Syrian political theorist Michel Aflaq and biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Sun Yat-sen, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Gaddafi briefly studied history at the University of Libya in Benghazi before dropping out to join the military.

The armed forces offered the only opportunity for upward social mobility for underprivileged Libyans, and Gaddafi recognized it as a potential instrument of political change.

Under Idris, Libya's armed forces were trained by the British military; this angered Gaddafi, who viewed the British as imperialists, and accordingly, he refused to learn English and was rude to the British officers, ultimately failing his exams.

Such reports were ignored, and Gaddafi quickly progressed through the course.

Gaddafi travelled around Libya collecting intelligence and developing connections with sympathizers, but the government's intelligence services ignored him, considering him little threat.

The Bovington signal course's director reported that Gaddafi successfully overcame problems learning English, displaying a firm command of voice procedure.

Gaddafi disliked England, claiming British Army officers had racially insulted him and finding it difficult adjusting to the country's culture; asserting his Arab identity in London, he walked around Piccadilly wearing traditional Libyan robes.

Gaddafi later related that while he travelled to England believing it more advanced than Libya, he returned home "more confident and proud of our values, ideals and social character".

Once Gaddafi removed the monarchical government, he announced the foundation of the Libyan Arab Republic.

Gaddafi insisted that the Free Officers' coup represented a revolution, marking the start of widespread change in the socio-economic and political nature of Libya.

Gaddafi proclaimed that the revolution meant "freedom, socialism, and unity", and over the coming years implemented measures to achieve this.

Lieutenant Gaddafi became RCC chairman, and therefore the de facto head of state, appointing himself to the rank of colonel and becoming commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Gaddafi remained the government's public face, with the identities of the other RCC members only being publicly revealed on 10 January 1970.

Three months after Gaddafi came to power, the army minister and interior minister, both of whom were from the eastern Barqa region, tried to overthrow him in a failed coup.

In September 1971, Gaddafi resigned, claiming to be dissatisfied with the pace of reform, but returned to his position within a month.

In July 1972, amid widespread speculation that Gaddafi had been ousted or jailed by his political opponents, a new 18-man cabinet was formed with only two of them, Jalloud and Abdel Moneim al-Houni, being military men; the rest were civilian technocrats per Gaddafi's insistence.

In February 1973, Gaddafi resigned again, once more returning the following month.

Gaddafi wanted to combat the strict social restrictions that had been imposed on women by the previous regime, establishing the Revolutionary Women's Formation to encourage reform.

In 1971, Gaddafi sponsored the creation of a Libyan General Women's Federation.

Gaddafi's regime opened up a wide range of educational and employment opportunities for women, although these primarily benefited a minority in the urban middle-classes.

Gaddafi propounded pan-Arab ideas, proclaiming the need for a single Arab state stretching across North Africa and the Middle East.

Nasser died unexpectedly in September 1970, with Gaddafi playing a prominent role at his funeral.

In July 1971, Gaddafi sided with Sadat against the Soviet Union in the 1971 Sudanese coup d'etat and dispatched Libyan fighter jets to force down a British Airlines jetliner carrying the leading coup plotters, Farouk Osman Hamadallah and Babikir al-Nour.

Such attempts to form a working relationship with the RCC failed; Gaddafi was determined to reassert national sovereignty and expunge what he described as foreign colonial and imperialist influences.

Gaddafi believed that Palestinian violence against Israeli and Western targets was the justified response of an oppressed people who were fighting against the colonization of their homeland.

In June 1972 Gaddafi created the First Nasserite Volunteers Centre to train anti-Israeli guerrillas.

Gaddafi funded the Black September Organization whose members perpetrated the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in West Germany and had the killed militants' bodies flown to Libya for a hero's funeral.

Gaddafi was indiscriminate in the causes which he funded, sometimes switching from supporting one side in a conflict to the other, as in the Eritrean War of Independence.

On 16 April 1973, Gaddafi proclaimed the start of a "Popular Revolution" in a speech at Zuwarah.

Gaddafi initiated this with a five-point plan, the first point of which dissolved all existing laws, to be replaced by revolutionary enactments.

The second point proclaimed that all opponents of the revolution had to be removed, while the third initiated an administrative revolution that Gaddafi proclaimed would remove all traces of bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie.

Gaddafi began to lecture on this new phase of the revolution in Libya, Egypt, and France.

Gaddafi hoped that the councils would mobilize the people behind the RCC, erode the power of the traditional leaders and the bureaucracy, and allow for a new legal system chosen by the people.

In June 1973, Gaddafi created a political ideology as a basis for the Popular Revolution: Third International Theory.

Gaddafi saw Islam as having a key role in this ideology, calling for an Islamic revival that returned to the origins of the Qur'an, rejecting scholarly interpretations and the Hadith; in doing so, he angered many Libyan clerics.

Gaddafi summarized Third International Theory in three short volumes published between 1975 and 1979, collectively known as The Green Book.

The second dealt with Gaddafi's beliefs regarding socialism, while the third explored social issues regarding the family and the tribe.

Meanwhile, in September 1975, Gaddafi implemented further measures to increase popular mobilization, introducing objectives to improve the relationship between the Councils and the ASU.

In 1975, Gaddafi's government declared a state monopoly on foreign trade.

In September 1975, Gaddafi purged the army, arresting around 200 senior officers, and in October he founded the clandestine Office for the Security of the Revolution.

Dissent arose from conservative clerics and the Muslim Brotherhood, who accused Gaddafi of moving towards Marxism and criticized his abolition of private property as being against the Islamic sunnah; these forces were then persecuted as anti-revolutionary, while all privately owned Islamic colleges and universities were shut down.

Gaddafi was infuriated that Egypt had not done more to prevent the incident, and in retaliation planned to destroy the Queen Elizabeth 2, a British ship chartered by American Jews to sail to Haifa for Israel's 25th anniversary.

Gaddafi ordered an Egyptian submarine to target the ship, but Sadat cancelled the order, fearing a military escalation.

Gaddafi was later infuriated when Egypt and Syria planned the Yom Kippur War against Israel without consulting him and was angered when Egypt conceded to peace talks rather than continuing the war.

Gaddafi became openly hostile to Egypt's leader, calling for Sadat's overthrow.

When Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry took Sadat's side, Gaddafi spoke out against him, encouraging the Sudan People's Liberation Army's attempt to overthrow Nimeiry.

In 1974, Gaddafi released Abdul-Aziz Shennib, a commander under King Idris, from prison and appointed him Libyan ambassador to Jordan.

Intent on propagating Islam, in 1973 Gaddafi founded the Islamic Call Society, which had opened 132 centres across Africa within a decade.

Gaddafi was keen on reducing Israeli influence within Africa, using financial incentives to successfully convince eight African states to break off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973.

Gaddafi provided support for Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War; he reportedly deployed F-5s to Sargodha AFB and penned a strongly worded letter to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi accusing her of aggression against Pakistan.

Gaddafi sought to develop closer links in the Maghreb; in January 1974 Libya and Tunisia announced a political union, the Arab Islamic Republic.

Retaliating, Gaddafi sponsored anti-government militants in Tunisia into the 1980s.

In principle, the People's Congresses were Libya's highest authority, with major decisions proposed by government officials or with Gaddafi himself requiring the consent of the People's Congresses.

Gaddafi became General Secretary of the GPC, although he stepped down from this position in early 1979 and appointed himself "Leader of the Revolution".

In other instances, Gaddafi pushed through laws without the GPC's support, such as when he desired to allow women into the armed forces.

Gaddafi proclaimed that the People's Congresses provided for Libya's every political need, rendering other political organizations unnecessary; all non-authorized groups, including political parties, professional associations, independent trade unions, and women's groups, were banned.

In recognition of the growing commercial relationship between Libya and the Soviets, Gaddafi was invited to visit Moscow in December 1976; there, he entered talks with Leonid Brezhnev.

Gaddafi enjoyed a warm relationship with Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu.

In December 1978, Gaddafi stepped down as Secretary-General of the GPC, announcing his new focus on revolutionary rather than governmental activities; this was part of his new emphasis on separating the apparatus of the revolution from the government.

Gaddafi was frustrated by the slow pace of social reform on women's issues, and in 1979 launched a Revolutionary Women's Formation to replace the more gradualist Libyan General Women's Federation.

In February 1978, Gaddafi discovered that his head of military intelligence was plotting to kill him, and began to increasingly entrust security to his Qadhadfa tribe.

In November 1984, Gaddafi was tricked by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak into announcing the successful assassination of former Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid al-Bakkoush in Cairo; Bakkhoush not only turned up alive but held a press conference with Egypt's Interior Minister.

In 1979, Gaddafi created the Islamic Legion, through which several thousand Africans were trained in military tactics.

Major sources in the Italian media have alleged that the Itavia Flight 870 was shot down during a dogfight involving Libyan, United States, French and Italian Air Force fighters in an assassination attempt by NATO members on an important Libyan politician, perhaps even Gaddafi, who was flying in the same airspace that evening.

Libyan relations with Lebanon and Shi'ite communities across the world deteriorated due to the August 1978 disappearance of imam Musa al-Sadr when visiting Libya; the Lebanese accused Gaddafi of having him killed or imprisoned, a charge he denied.

In retaliation for Bhutto's execution and Zia's refusal to share Pakistan's nuclear technology with Libya, Gaddafi began training Al-Zulfiqar, an anti-Zia insurgency led by Bhutton's sons Murtaza and Shahnawaz, expelled all 150,000 Pakistanis living in Libya, and provided asylum for the Bhutto family.

Gaddafi later came to regret his alliance with Amin, openly criticizing him as a "fascist" and a "show-off".

In November 1985, Colonel Hassan Ishkal, the third powerful man in Libya, head of the military region of Sirte, and a distant cousin of Gaddafi, died in a suspicious car accident.

In 1982, the GUNT government was overthrown by Habre's forces and Oueddei fled to Libya, where Gaddafi provided him with arms to continue to wage guerrilla warfare against Habre.

In November 1984, Gaddafi met with French President Francois Mitterrand in Crete, where both sides agreed to withdraw from Chad.

Oueddei survived the shooting and fled to Algeria, but continued to claim he and Gaddafi enjoyed a good relationship.

When Gaddafi ordered the remnant of GUNT to attack Habre in February 1986 in violation of his agreement with Mitterand, France immediately launched Operation Epervier, which escalated into the Toyota War.

Shortly after this disastrous battle, Gaddafi disavowed Haftar and the other Libyan prisoners of war who were captured by Chad.

Gaddafi played up his commercial relationship with the Soviets, revisiting Moscow in 1981 and 1985, and threatening to join the Warsaw Pact.

The Soviets were nevertheless cautious of Gaddafi, seeing him as an unpredictable extremist.

In December 1981, the White House claimed Gaddafi had dispatched a hit squad to assassinate Reagan, allegedly led by Carlos the Jackal, who had been living in Libya under Gaddafi's protection after the 1975 OPEC siege.

Gaddafi was accused of having ties to the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, which had murdered US military attache Charles R Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris.

In 1980, Gaddafi hired former CIA agent Edwin P Wilson, who was living in Libya as a fugitive from US justice, to plot the murder of an anti-Gaddafi Libyan graduate student at Colorado State University named Faisal Zagallai.

In 1984, Gaddafi publicly executed Al-Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy, a student and aeronautical engineer studying in the US.

Himself unharmed, two of Gaddafi's sons were injured, and he claimed that his four-year-old adopted daughter Hanna was killed, although her existence has since been questioned.

In May 1987, Gaddafi announced the start of the "Revolution within a Revolution", which began with reforms to industry and agriculture and saw the re-opening of small business.

Restrictions were placed on the activities of the Revolutionary Committees; in March 1988, their role was narrowed by the newly created Ministry for Mass Mobilization and Revolutionary Leadership to restrict their violence and judicial role, while in August 1988 Gaddafi publicly criticized them.

Several assassination attempts against Gaddafi were foiled, and in turn, 1989 saw the security forces raid mosques believed to be centres of counter-revolutionary preaching.

Gaddafi's body was not found until 2012 in a morgue that belonged to Gaddafi's intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi.

In 1989, Gaddafi was overjoyed by the foundation of the Arab Maghreb Union, uniting Libya in an economic pact with Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, viewing it as beginnings of a new pan-Arab union.

Gaddafi was able to recover some influence in Chad after Hissene Habre was overthrown by Idriss Deby in a Libya-sponsored coup in 1990.

When Gaddafi refused, citing the Montreal Convention, the United Nations imposed Resolution 748 in March 1992, initiating economic sanctions against Libya which had deep repercussions for the country's economy.

In 1996, Gaddafi wrote a letter to the newly elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's daughter Sheikh Hasina, pleading with her to spare the lives of her father's assassins Syed Faruque Rahman and Khandaker Abdur Rashid.

Privately, Gaddafi maintained that he knew nothing about who perpetrated the bombing and that Libya had nothing to do with it.

In June 1999, Gaddafi visited Mandela in South Africa, and the following month attended the OAU summit in Algiers, calling for greater political and economic integration across the continent and advocating the foundation of a United States of Africa.

Gaddafi became one of the founders of the African Union, initiated in July 2002 to replace the OAU.

In March 2008 in Uganda, Gaddafi gave a speech urging Africa to reject foreign aid.

That same month, Gaddafi was elected as the chairperson of the African Union, a position he retained for one year.

In October 2010, Gaddafi apologized to African leaders for the historical enslavement of Africans by the Arab slave trade.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi continued to have testy relationships with most of his fellow Arab leaders.

Gaddafi accused Saudi Arabia of having made an "alliance with the devil" when it invited the US to intervene in the 1991 Gulf War.

In September 2001, Gaddafi publicly condemned the September 11 attacks on the US by al-Qaeda, expressing sympathy with the victims and calling for Libyan involvement in the US-led War on Terror against militant Islamism.

Gaddafi's government continued suppressing domestic Islamism, at the same time as Gaddafi called for the wider application of sharia law.

In 2009, Gaddafi attempted to strong-arm global energy companies operating in Libya to cover Libya's settlement with the families of the victims of Lockerbie.

Gaddafi completed agreements with the Italian government that they would invest in various infrastructure projects as reparations for past Italian colonial policies in Libya.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave Libya an official apology in 2006, after which Gaddafi called him the "iron man" for his courage in doing so.

In Spring 2010, Gaddafi proclaimed jihad against Switzerland after Swiss police accused two of his family members of criminal activity in the country, resulting in the breakdown of bilateral relations.

Gaddafi allegedly financed Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 French presidential election.

Gaddafi financed Austrian far-right politician Jorg Haider starting in 2000.

Gaddafi welcomed these reforms, calling for wide-scale privatization in a March 2003 speech; he promised that Libya would join the World Trade Organization.

Libya changed its stance on the WTO after the removal of technocrat Shukri Ghanem, with Gaddafi condemning the WTO as a neocolonial terrorist organisation, and urging African and Third World countries not to join it.

Gaddafi led a group who proposed the drafting of a new constitution, although it was never adopted.

Gaddafi suggested that Tunisia's people would be satisfied if Ben Ali introduced a Jamahiriyah system there.

That month, Amnesty International published their report, finding that Gaddafi's forces were responsible for numerous war crimes but added that a number of allegations of human rights abuses lacked credible evidence.

Gaddafi was reportedly planning to catch up with his Sebha commander Ali Kanna's Tuareg forces and seek asylum in Burkina Faso.

The Misrata militia took Gaddafi prisoner, causing serious injuries as they tried to apprehend him; the events were filmed on a mobile phone.

Gaddafi's semi-naked, lifeless body was then placed into an ambulance and taken to Misrata; upon arrival, he was found to be dead.

Gaddafi's corpse was placed in the freezer of a local market alongside the corpses of Yunis Jabr and Mutassim; the bodies were publicly displayed for four days, with Libyans from all over the country coming to view them.

Gaddafi laid out the principles of this Theory in the three volumes of The Green Book, in which he sought to "explain the structure of the ideal society".

Gaddafi called for the Arab world to regain its dignity and assert a major place on the world stage, blaming Arab backwardness on stagnation resulting from Ottoman rule, European colonialism and imperialism, and corrupt and repressive monarchies.

Gaddafi had international ambitions, wanting to export his revolutionary ideas throughout the world.

Gaddafi saw his socialist Jamahiriyah as a model for the Arab, Islamic, and non-aligned worlds to follow, and in his speeches declared that his Third International Theory would eventually guide the entire planet.

Gaddafi nevertheless had minimal success in exporting the ideology outside of Libya.

Gaddafi believed in opposing Western imperialism and colonialism in the Arab world, including any Western expansionism through the form of Israel.

Gaddafi offered support to a broad range of political groups abroad that called themselves "anti-imperialist", especially those that set themselves in opposition to the United States.

Gaddafi believed that the state of Israel should not exist and that any Arab compromise with the Israeli government was a betrayal of the Arab people.

In large part due to their support of Israel, Gaddafi despised the United States, considering the country to be imperialist and lambasting it as "the embodiment of evil".

Gaddafi rallied against Jews in many of his speeches, with Blundy and Lycett claiming that his anti-Semitism was "almost Hitlerian".

Gaddafi rejected the secularist approach to Arab nationalism that had been pervasive in Syria, with his revolutionary movement placing a far stronger emphasis on Islam than previous Arab nationalist movements had done.

Gaddafi deemed Arabism and Islam to be inseparable, referring to them as "one and indivisible", and called on the Arab world's Christian minority to convert to Islam.

Gaddafi insisted that Islamic law should be the basis for the law of the state, blurring any distinction between the religious and secular realms.

Gaddafi desired unity across the Islamic world, and encouraged the propagation of the faith elsewhere; on a 2010 visit to Italy, he paid a modelling agency to find 200 young Italian women for a lecture he gave urging them to convert.

Gaddafi was driven by a sense of "divine mission", believing himself a conduit of God's will, and thought that he must achieve his goals "no matter what the cost".

Gaddafi was staunchly anti-Marxist, and in 1973 declared that "it is the duty of every Muslim to combat" Marxism because it promotes atheism.

Nevertheless, Blundy and Lycett noted that Gaddafi's socialism had a "curiously Marxist undertone", with political scientist Sami Hajjar arguing that Gaddafi's model of socialism offered a simplification of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's theories.

Gaddafi described himself as a "simple revolutionary" and "pious Muslim" called upon by God to continue Nasser's work.

Gaddafi regarded himself as an intellectual; he was a fan of Beethoven and said his favourite novels were Uncle Tom's Cabin, Roots, and The Stranger.

Gaddafi favoured either a military uniform or traditional Libyan dress, tending to eschew Western-style suits.

Gaddafi was preoccupied with his own security, regularly changing where he slept and sometimes grounding all other planes in Libya when he was flying.

Gaddafi was notably confrontational in his approach to foreign powers and generally shunned Western ambassadors and diplomats, believing them to be spies.

Gaddafi hired several Ukrainian nurses to care for him; one described him as kind and considerate and was surprised that allegations of abuse had been made against him.

Gaddafi's second wife was Safia Farkash, nee el-Brasai, a former nurse from the Obeidat tribe born in Bayda.

In private, Gaddafi often complained that he disliked this personality cult surrounding him, but that he tolerated it because the people of Libya adored him.

The cult served a political purpose, with Gaddafi helping to provide a central identity for the Libyan state.

Gaddafi enjoyed attending lengthy public sessions where people were invited to question him; these were often televised.

Gaddafi was typically late to public events, and would sometimes fail to arrive.

The biographer Daniel Kawczynski noted that Gaddafi was famed for his "lengthy, wandering" speeches, which typically involved criticizing Israel and the US.

Gaddafi was widely perceived as a terrorist, especially in the US and UK.

Gaddafi was mourned as a hero by many across sub-Saharan Africa but was widely condemned elsewhere.