It was led by a twelve-member cabinet known as the Revolutionary Command Council, whose chairman was Muammar Gaddafi, which came to govern the Libyan Arab Republic.

[4] Gaddafi established the Free Officers movement at the Libyan Royal Military Academy in Benghazi in 1964, a revolutionary group which met secretly.

Although they claimed that they knew of Gaddafi's Free Officers movement, they have since ignored it, stating that they were instead monitoring Abdul Aziz Shalhi's Black Boots revolutionary group.

Army units quickly reassembled in support of the coup and established military control over Tripoli and in other places across the country within a few days.

Khweldi Hameidi captured the Tripoli radio station and was sent to arrest crown prince Sayyid Hasan ar-Rida al-Mahdi as-Sanussi and force him to give up his claim to the throne.

In its proclamation on 1 September, the Revolutionary Command Council declared the country to be an independent and sovereign state with the name of the Libyan Arab Republic, which would continue "in the path of freedom, unity, and social justice, guaranteeing the right of equality to its citizens, and opening before them the doors of honourable work."

After the Six-Day War in 1967, the Free Officers demanded "total political and economic independence from any kind of foreign (non-Arab) influence, direction, control or constraint.