Thursday, October 20, 2011

Col Muammar Gaddafi

Born in Sirte, Libya 7 June 1942
Attended military academy in Libya, Greece and the UK
Seized power on 1 September 1969

In 1971 Col Gaddafi, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Syrian President Hafez Assad formed the Federation of Arab Republics, but it failed to take off as an organisation

Col Gaddafi blended the elements of socialism and Islamic ideals and by 1975 had outlined his political philosophy in the first of three volumes of his Green Book.

Renames Libya the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – its slogan" "God! Muammar! Libya! Enough!" in 1977
During the 1980s Col Gaddafi hosted training camps for rebel groups from across West Africa and backed a number of militant groups including the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organisation(PLO)
Pan Am flight 103 from Heathrow to New York is brought down by an on-board bomb over Lockerbie three days before Christmas, killing 270 people in December 1988.Gaddafi agrees to pay $2.7bn compensation to relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing

Married twice, with seven sons and one daugther
Tony Blair meets Gaddafi in the Libyan leader's desert tent in 2004

In 2009 Col Gadaffi visits the US for first time to address the UN general assembly. It is meant to last 15 minutes but he blusters on for an hour and a half, accusing the security council of being terrorists and demands $7.7bn compensation to Africa for European colonialism. Intrigues Americans during visit by bring his bedouin tent to sleep in

The Libyan leader's personal bodyguard contingent often provoked interest. The "Amazonian Guard" was made up entirely of women, specially trained in the use of firearms and martial arts, and reports suggest a condition of their employment was that they remained virgins.

Gaddafi was a huge admirer of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952

In the heady days of 1969 - when he seized power in a bloodless military coup - and the early 1970s, Muammar Gaddafi was a handsome and charismatic young army officer.

Significant Oil reserves had been discovered in Libya in the late 1950s, but the extraction was controlled by foreign petroleum companies, which set prices to the advantage of their own domestic consumers and benefited from a half share in the revenue

Col Gaddafi demanded renegotiation of the contracts, threatening to shut off production if the oil companies refused.

Libya became the first developing country to secure a majority share of the revenues from its own oil production. Other nations soon followed this precedent and the 1970s Arab petro-boom began.

Moammar Gaddafi is accused of -
committing grave human rights violations.
massacring of 1,200 political prisoners in the Bouslim jail in 1996
funding and supporting several terrorist organizations and separatist movements in Africa, the Middle East, the Far East and Latin America.

Media Headlines on Gaddafi's Death

Muammar Gaddafi Dead: Libyans Celebrate

The Libyan fighters on Thursday overran the remaining positions of Muammar Gaddafi loyalists in his hometown of Sirte, ending the last major resistance by former regime supporters still holding out two months after the fall of the capital Tripoli

Tunisians and Libyans living in Tunisia wave Libya's National Transitional Council flag as they celebrate on October 20, 2011 in the Mohamed V street of Tunis after the announcement of the death of Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi

Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters celebrate in the coastal city of Sirte on October 20, 2011 after the final bastion of resistance by forces loyal strongman Muammar Gaddafi fell to fighters of the new regime