Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi[pron 1] (c. 1942 – 20 October 2011) was a Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his assassination by the rebel forces of the National Liberation Army in 2011.

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

[19] 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.

[24] From Sirte, he and his family moved to the market town of Sabha in Fezzan, south-central Libya, where his father worked as a caretaker for a tribal leader while Muammar attended secondary school, something neither parent had done.

[36] He 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 Atatürk.

[46] 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.

In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your most incessant demands for change and regeneration, and your longing to strive towards these ends: listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all.

[93] The RCC followed with the Tripoli Agreement of 20 March 1971, in which they secured income tax, back-payments and better pricing from the oil corporations; these measures brought Libya an estimated $1 billion in additional revenues in its first year.

[103] The consumption of alcohol was prohibited, night clubs and Christian churches were shut down, traditional Libyan dress was encouraged, and Arabic was decreed as the only language permitted in official communications and on road signs.

[136] Over the coming decade, Gaddafi's government developed stronger political and economic links with Dom Mintoff's Maltese administration, and under Libya's urging Malta did not renew the UK's airbases on the island in 1980.

[146] He 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.

[212] Seeking to diversify Libya's economy, Gaddafi's government began purchasing shares in major European corporations like Fiat as well as buying real estate in Malta and Italy, which would become a valuable source of income during the 1980s oil slump.

[232] Historian Dirk Vandewalle stated that despite the Jamahariya's claims to being a direct democracy, Libya remained "an exclusionary political system whose decision-making process" was "restricted to a small cadre of advisers and confidantes" surrounding Gaddafi.

[242] The following year, the GPC announced that the government would take control of all import, export and distribution functions, with state supermarkets replacing privately owned businesses; this led to a decline in the availability of consumer goods and the development of a thriving black market.

[253][254] Within a three months period in 1980, at least ten Libyan dissidents were murdered in Europe, including ex-diplomats, ex-army officers, businessmen, journalists, and student activists in disparate locations such as London, Greece and Austria.

[263][264] Libyan relations with Lebanon and Shi'ite communities deteriorated due to the 1978 disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr when visiting Libya; the Lebanese accused Gaddafi of having him killed or imprisoned, a charge he denied.

[306] In 1980, Gaddafi hired former CIA agent Edwin P. Wilson, 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.

[322] Also in 1989, the government founded the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, to be awarded to figures from the Third World who had struggled against colonialism and imperialism; the first year's winner was South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.

[331] In October 1993, elements of the increasingly marginalized army, led by officers from the powerful Warfalla tribe, initiated a failed coup in Misrata and Bani Walid allegedly with help from the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, Khalifa Haftar, and the CIA,[332][333] while in September 1995, Islamists launched an insurgency in Benghazi, and in July 1996 an anti-Gaddafist football riot broke out in Tripoli.

[414][415][416] Libya's economy witnessed increasing privatization; although rejecting the socialist policies of nationalized industry advocated in The Green Book, government figures asserted that they were forging "people's socialism" rather than capitalism.

[434] Fearing domestic protest, Libya's government implemented preventive measures by reducing food prices, purging the army leadership of potential defectors, and releasing several Islamist prisoners.

Unlike Tunisia or Egypt, Libya was largely religiously homogeneous and had no strong Islamist movement, but there was widespread dissatisfaction with the corruption and entrenched systems of patronage, while unemployment had reached around 30 percent.

[451] 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.

The report added that "much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime's security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators".

[462] Surrounding himself with bodyguards and a small entourage,[457] including Mutassim, security chief Mansour Dhao, and defense minister Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, Gaddafi continually changed residences to escape NATO and NTC shelling, devoting his days to prayer and reading the Qur'an.

[512] He desired unity across the Islamic world,[513] 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.

[548] One of those Cojean interviewed, a woman named Soraya, claimed that Gaddafi kept her imprisoned in a basement for six years, where he repeatedly raped her, urinated on her, and forced her to watch pornography, drink alcohol, and snort cocaine.

[562] According to Hinnebusch, the foundations of Gaddafi's "personal charismatic authority" in Libya stemmed from the blessing he had received from Nasser coupled with "nationalist achievements" such as the expulsion of foreign military bases, the extraction of higher prices for Libyan oil, and his vocal support for the Palestinian and other anti-imperialist causes.

[573] Supporters have also applauded achievements in medical care, praising the universal free healthcare provided under the Gaddafist administration, with diseases like cholera and typhoid being contained and life expectancy raised.

[573] Gaddafi's government's treatment of non-Arab Libyans came in for criticism from human rights activists, with native Berbers, Italian colonists, Jews, refugees, and foreign workers all facing persecution in Gaddafist Libya.