[4][5] The NFSL's founder and former leader, Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf was appointed chairman of the General National Congress, effectively making him interim head of state.

[6] Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, a former Libyan ambassador to India, founded the NFSL on 7 October 1981, at a press conference held in Khartoum, Sudan.

The NFSL launched a wide campaign to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, establishing a short-wave radio station, a commando military training camp and also published a bi-monthly newsletter, Al Inqadh (Salvation).

Three weeks after the embassy protest, on 8 May 1984, NFSL commandos took part in an attack on Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli, in an attempt to assassinate the Libyan leader.

Although the coup attempt failed and Gaddafi escaped unscathed, dissident groups claimed that some eighty Libyans, Cubans, and East Germans had been killed in the operation.

The NFSL had previously acted as a conduit between the Habré government and that of Saddam Hussain, who provided the Chadian military with arms captured from Iran during the then ongoing conflict.

[10] A 1996 BBC Channel 4 investigative report linked the NFSL to another militant anti-Gaddafi group Al-Burkan which assassinated several Libyan diplomats in Europe during the 1980s.

At the time of the group's dissolution in 2012, the NFSL executive committee was led by Secretary-General Ibrahim Abdulaziz Sahad, who was re-elected for his second term during the 5th National Congress held in July 2007 in the United States.