[1][2][3] Libya under King Idris signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and Gaddafi ratified it in 1975, and concluded a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1980.

[11] In February 2015, Libyan military sources told media that unidentified armed men had captured large amounts of Libya’s chemical weapons, including mustard gas and sarin.

[3] Gaddafi‘s most famous buying foray for nuclear weapons was in 1970, when Libyan leaders paid a state visit to China.

[17] Gaddafi and his Prime Minister Abdessalam Jalloud made an unsuccessful attempt to convince China to sell tactical nuclear weapons to Libya.

[19] Before Pakistan's A-bomb project succeeded, Libya had been taken out of the equation as the new President General Zia-ul-Haq had distrusted and strongly disliked Gaddafi.

[18] Investigators have found that nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China.

Libya imported 1,200 tons of uranium ore concentrate from French-controlled mines in Niger without declaring it to the IAEA, as required by its safeguards agreement.

[3] After the end of Cold War, Gaddafi bluntly persuaded the U.S. President Bill Clinton to uplift the sanctions by allowing the disarmament of its nuclear program.

The Tajura facility was run under the Soviet experts and staffed by a small number of inexperienced Libyan specialists and technicians.

Nuclear expert David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security said the Soviet Union and China were the most likely suspects.

[3] In 1984, Libya negotiated with the Soviet Union for a supply of nuclear power plants, but its out-of-date technology dissatisfied Colonel Gaddafi.

[26] In 1991, Libya tried to exploit the chaos generated by the collapse of the Soviet Union to gain access to nuclear technology, expertise, and materials.

[27] In March 1998, Russia and Libya signed a contract with the Russian consortium, the Atomenergoeksport for a partial overhaul of the Tajoura Nuclear Research Center.

[31] In early September 2011, OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü said reports he had received indicated that the remaining weapons were secure and had not fallen into the hands of militant groups.

[33] In late September it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that a major ammunition complex, including chemical-weapons-capable artillery shells, was unguarded and open to looting.

[34] In December 2012 a senior Spanish intelligence official said that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb "probably also has non-conventional arms, basically chemical, as a result of the loss of control of arsenals", with Libya the most likely source.

[11] On 5 February 2015, the Libyan Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Director-General of OPCW agreed on the need to complete the destruction of the remaining precursor chemicals.

[42] On 21 February 2015, Asharq Al-Awsat reported that an anonymous Libyan army official stated extremists had seized large amounts of Gaddafi’s chemical weapons from multiple locations.

[13] On 31 August 2016, the last stockpile of ingredients for chemical weapons in the country was removed to Germany to avoid it falling into the hands of militants and was slated for destruction.

[46] In 1982, Libya sent two 9P117 TELs and around 20 Scud-B missiles for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps alongside instructors during the War of the cities against Iraq.

[47][49] The Libyans also worked on the development of a domestically produced 950–1,000 km (590–620 mi) range missile, the "Al-Fatah" reportedly based on a West German design (the OTRAG rocket) with foreign assistance from Iraq, Iran, Serbia, and China.