Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s love of comic-opera uniforms, exotic female bodyguards and Bedouin tents provided a theatrical backdrop for 42 years of bloody repression that in the end was basically put to an end by a feeble uprising but mostly by Western powers with their bombs. But for all the outrage over his flouting of international norms, he was also seen by diplomats as a wily political operator, proving to be one of the great survivors in a turbulent region. Through assassination attempts, sanctions and US air strikes, he doggedly clung to power.
TRIPOLI – For four decades, the wilful, mercurial figure of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya with an iron grip while remaining a persistent thorn in the side of the West.
Branded “mad dog” by Ronald Reagan, the outlandish antics, flamboyant dress and bombastic pronouncements of the self-styled “Brother Leader” made him a figure of ridicule at times. During his travels abroad, a blonde Ukrainian nurse accompanied him and he insisted on staying in his Bedouin tent, protected by his team of glamorous female bodyguards. When he was interviewed by the BBC’s John Simpson, he noisily broke wind throughout their encounter.
At home in Libya, he ruthlessly crushed dissent against his autocratic rule while his agents hunted down and killed opponents abroad. When his people — inspired by the Arab Spring — finally rose up against him earlier this year, he responded with a characteristic mixture of bluster and brutality calling for the “devils” to be cleansed.
But for all the outrage over his flouting of international norms, he was also seen by diplomats as a wily political operator, proving to be one of the great survivors in a turbulent region. Through assassination attempts, sanctions and US air strikes, he doggedly clung to power.
Born in the desert in 1942, 27-year-old Gaddafi became the leader of a small group of junior army officers who in September 1969 staged a bloodless coup, overthrowing King Idris while he was abroad for medical treatment.
Fiercely anti-western and inspired by Egypt’s President Nasser, he governed according to his unique political philosophy — set out in his Green Book — based on a combination of socialism and Arab nationalism.
He quickly showed he would brook no dissent to his idiosyncratic rule, reportedly having students who marched against his regime publicly hanged. In one of his most infamous atrocities, 1,200 prisoners were massacred in a Tripoli jail in 1996.
Abroad, his outspoken public support for a range of terrorist organisations, including the IRA and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, attracted growing international criticism and concern.
The increasingly erratic nature of his regime was underlined in 1984 when diplomats at the Libyan embassy in London opened fire on a demonstration outside, killing Yvonne Fletcher.
In 1986, the bombing by Libyan agents of a Berlin nightclub, in which two off-duty American servicemen died, prompted President Reagan to launch air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi’s adopted daughter was among 35 Libyans killed.
Two years later, on December 21 1988, came the most notorious incident of all — the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing 270. The attack prompted global outrage. For years Gaddafi denied any involvement, leading to UN sanctions and international pariah status for his regime.
He finally began to emerge from the cold when South African president Nelson Mandela helped to broker a deal which saw two Libyan intelligence officers handed over in 1999 to stand trial before a Scottish court. In 2003, after one of the men had been convicted, the Libyan government wrote to the UNSC formally accepting responsibility for the actions of its officials in the attacks.
Gaddafi’s rehabilitation seemed complete when the same year, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by US and British forces, he admitted that Libya had an active weapons of mass destruction programme which he offered to dismantle. In 2004, Tony Blair travelled to Tripoli to welcome the West’s new ally in the so-called “War on Terror”.
