Moammar Gadhafi, the longest-serving leader in Africa and the Arab world, was captured and killed on this day in 2011 by rebel forces near his hometown of Sirte.
Born into a Bedouin family in June 1942, Gadhafi attended the Royal Military Academy in Benghazi and briefly received additional military training in Great Britain.
On September 1, 1969, Gadhafi emerged as the head of the new revolutionary government when he led a bloodless coup that overthrew Libya’s pro-Western monarch, King Idris who was out of the country at the time.
The eccentric dictator, headed a government that was accused of numerous human rights violations against its own people and was linked to terrorist attacks, including the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. He also forced the closing of American and British military bases in Libya, took control of much of the nation’s oil industry, and tortured and killed political dissenters.
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