Biography of Muammar Gaddafi. What kind of ruler was he? Biography of Muammar Gaddafi Muammar Gaddafi Biography

Former head of state of the Libyan Jamahiriya, overthrown and assassinated in 2011

The leader of the Libyan revolution, the political and military leader of the state of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In fact, he led the country since 1969, after he came to power by overthrowing the monarchy of King Idris I. After the start of the civil war in Libya in 2011, he was accused by the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity. In September 2011, after many countries recognized the legitimacy of the rebel government, he was put on the international wanted list by Interpol. Killed October 20, 2011.

Muammar bin Mohammed Abu Menyar Abdel Salam bin Hamid al-Gaddafi was born in 1942 (according to other sources - in 1944) in the area of ​​the Libyan city of Sirte, in the family of a Bedouin shepherd. Subsequently, Gaddafi admitted that the early years spent in the desert left an imprint on his whole life: "The desert teaches you to rely on your own strength."

Journalists counted more than thirty Latin transcriptions of Gaddafi's name. In particular, the name of the Libyan leader is written as Gaddafi, Gathafi, Gathafi, Gadafy, Qaddafi, Qadhdhafi and so on.

At the age of nine, Gaddafi went to elementary school, graduating four years later. Then he studied at the secondary school of the city of Sebha. In his family, he was the first to receive a secondary education.

At school, according to one of the sources, at the age of sixteen, Gaddafi created an underground youth cell designed to overthrow the existing system (after gaining independence from Italy in 1949, Libya was ruled by King Idris I).

The political views of Gaddafi were formed under the influence of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, a socialist and pan-Arabist. In particular, journalists pointed to Nasser's work "Philosophy of Revolution" as a source of inspiration for the young Gaddafi. Gaddafi organized anti-government demonstrations, for which, as biographers reported, he was eventually expelled from school.

After school, Gaddafi received a higher education, information about which is somewhat contradictory. According to one source, in 1959, Gaddafi entered the university, where in 1964 he received a law degree. Another biographer reports that Gaddafi studied history at the Libyan University in Tripoli and received a bachelor's degree in 1963. There is also evidence that Gaddafi studied at a branch of the Libyan University, located in the second largest city in the country - Benghazi. According to some reports, at the Libyan University in Benghazi, Gaddafi listened to an evening course of lectures while studying at the military academy (or military college) of this city.

Gaddafi studied at the military academy, according to various sources, in 1963-1965 or 1964-1965. Despite his political activities during his school years, Gaddafi had a reputation as an exemplary cadet and enjoyed the favor of his colleagues and superiors. In 1965 he was sent to active army. He was later sent to study at the British Army Signal Corps College, where he spent ten months. A less reliable source reports that in the UK, Gaddafi studied armored business.

According to some reports, Gaddafi first gained fame when, on his own initiative, without the sanction of his superiors, he sent his unit to help Nasser's Egyptian troops during the 1967 Six-Day War. Later, the captain of the Gaddafi signal troops led a conspiracy of junior officers who, on September 1, 1969, captured the royal palace in Tripoli, government offices, radio and television. King Idris, who was abroad, was deposed, the rebels proclaimed Libya a republic.

The press reported that a week had passed since the coup before the cautious Gaddafi announced himself as the leader of the rebels. He took over as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and Supreme Commander. After the revolution, Gaddafi was promoted to the rank of colonel, and he continued to be called a colonel even after being promoted to the rank of major general in 1976. From 1970 to 1972, Gaddafi held the official posts of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Libya.

Prior to the 1969 revolution, Libya was under the all-encompassing influence of foreigners. Military bases of various foreign states were located on the territory of the country, including Wheelus Field, the largest foreign base of the US Air Force. Foreign oil companies controlled vast expanses of Libyan territory. A significant part of the economy was under the control of 110,000 Italian colonists.

After the revolution, with the overwhelming support of the population, the new leadership withdrew foreign military bases from the country. The Italians were expelled. Moreover, as an act of revenge for the bloody colonial war unleashed against Libya in the 1920s by fascist Italy, the Libyans dug up the graves of the occupying soldiers and pulled out their remains.

The Gaddafi government put pressure on foreign oil companies, demanding a larger share of their income. In case of refusal, the corporations were nationalized. Revenues from oil production were directed to social needs. This made it possible by the mid-1970s to implement large-scale programs for the construction of public housing, the development of health care and education. Even in the most remote areas of Libya, new schools, clinics and housing estates were being built. Libyan society has undergone a noticeable transformation, the quality of life has improved.

In the 1970s, Gaddafi formulated the so-called "Third World Theory", which was supposed to replace the two previous world theories - Adam Smith's capitalism and Karl Marx's communism. The colonel rejected capitalism and communism, since the first, in his opinion, worked only for the benefit of the elite, and the second suppressed the individual. The third world theory was set forth in Gaddafi's three-volume Green Book. The colonel advocated a social structure called "Jamahiriya", which meant "the state of the masses", or direct democracy based on a system of people's committees. All previously existing state structures were declared undemocratic. Gaddafi himself called his work "the gospel of the new age."

According to one of the researchers, initially Gaddafi's ideology was exclusively utopian in nature and was formed under the influence of the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, the rejection from the West, which arose in the post-revolutionary period, pushed the colonel in the direction of the Soviet Union, and this left its mark on the theory set forth in the Green Book. At the same time, there is evidence that Gaddafi began to show interest in Marxism while still studying at the university. Speaking about the Soviet influence on Gaddafi's "Third World Theory", one of the researchers highlights Vladimir Lenin's work "State and Revolution". It is also known that when working on the Green Book, the colonel turned to the works of Russian anarchist theorists Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin.

In accordance with the "Third World Theory", the Libyan state was reformed. Back in 1973, Gaddafi proclaimed the "People's Revolution", and in 1977 the Libyan Republic was officially transformed into the Jamahiriya. The official name of the Libyan state is the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Power in the Libyan Jamahiriya was officially transferred to people's congresses, which included the entire adult population of the country and whose activities covered all spheres of life. The highest legislative body of the Jamahiriya - the General People's Congress (GPC) in 1977 could not elect its chairman. Gaddafi and four of his closest associates, members of the SRC, were elected to the General Secretariat of the GNC: Major Abdel Salam Ahmed Jelloud, Generals Abu Bakr Younes Jaber, Mustafa al-Kharrubi and Huwayldi al-Khmeidi. From 1977 to 1979, the colonel served as Secretary General of the VNK.

In 1979, Gaddafi, along with four associates, resigned, their places in the General Secretariat of the GNC were taken by professional managers. Jelloud, Jaber, al-Kharrubi and al-Khmeidi remained members of the SRK, and Gaddafi became officially the leader of the revolution. Revolutionary committees appeared in the political structure of Libya, designed to carry out revolutionary politics through a system of people's congresses. Gaddafi, even having lost all government posts, actually retained full power and remained the head of state. The Libyans called him "al-ah al-qaeed assaura" ("brother leader of the revolution") and "al-ah al-aqid" ("brother colonel").

The Gaddafi regime supported numerous national liberation, revolutionary and terrorist organizations around the world: in Palestine, Uganda, Northern Ireland, Morocco, Sudan, Angola, Mozambique, Spain, Colombia, Turkey, New Caledonia, and the Philippines.

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Libya became a haven for various Palestinian rebel groups. The founder and head of the "Fatah Revolutionary Council" Abu Nidal was called the most famous of the terrorists who enjoyed the patronage of Gaddafi, along with the Venezuelan Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal.

By the end of the 1970s, training camps were set up in Libya, where terrorists from all over the world were trained, including militants from the German Red Army Faction (RAF) Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof and the Japanese Red Army. In the mid-1980s, according to Israeli secret services, there were about twenty camps of this kind in Libya, and the number of terrorists trained in them reached 7,000.

In 1986, Gaddafi held a congress of the World Center for Combating Imperialism and Zionism in Libya. Among the participants of the event were representatives of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Basque terrorist group ETA, as well as Louis Farrakhan - the leader of the radical black organization from the United States "Nation of Islam" (Nation of Islam).

In the 1970s and 1980s, Libya was repeatedly accused of interfering in the affairs of foreign states. It was reported that the Gaddafi regime supported the coups in Tunisia and Burkina Faso, supported the regime of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. In 1977, there was a border war between Libya and Egypt. Libya sent troops into Chad twice.

The large-scale transformations of Libyan society that Gaddafi carried out were not approved by all the inhabitants of the country, but Gaddafi made it clear that he did not intend to hold a public discussion: oppositionists were persecuted. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a tightening of policy towards dissidents, and the killings of Libyan political exiles in foreign countries began. As reported in the media, in the period from 1980 to 1986, more than fifteen Libyan opposition emigrants were killed in the United States and Europe. Gaddafi himself has repeatedly become the target of assassination attempts, in particular, the assassination of the colonel was the goal of the Libyan National Liberation Front, which was sponsored by Sudan, Morocco, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Comparing the rule of Gaddafi with other regimes in the Arab countries, the researchers admitted that the colonel pursued a relatively soft line against dissidents: in particular, he did not have any mass repressions. In 1988, he even ordered the bulldozer to break the gates of the Furnas prison in Tripoli and release 400 prisoners. A few days later, he publicly tore up the "black lists" of people suspected of dissident activity. Gaddafi used a bloodless method of dealing with political rivals: civil servants were constantly moving from one position to another, which did not allow them to build up their influence to compete with the colonel.

At first, the United States preferred to turn a blind eye to Gaddafi's authoritarian course: his anti-communist views and high-quality Libyan oil were valued too highly in the West. According to reports, in 1971, the American ambassador to Tripoli even turned over to the local authorities a group of conspiring officers who recklessly trusted him.

The attitude of the Americans to the Libyan leadership began to change when Gaddafi began to spread his influence beyond Libya. The press called his ambitions messianic: the colonel dreamed of creating a united Arab republic, and he saw himself as its leader.

Of particular displeasure in the West was Libya's active involvement in the 1973 Arab oil embargo against Western support for Israel. Gaddafi called for the destruction of Israel, considering it necessary for the good of the Arab world. Libyan-Israeli relations were extremely tense. The most famous was the incident with the Libyan passenger plane, which Israeli troops shot down over the territory of the Sinai Peninsula occupied by them. According to the colonel, only American patronage ensured the existence of Israel, and therefore the Libyan leader began to see the United States as the main enemy.

The issue of Israel played a key role in the reorientation of Libyan foreign policy in the direction of the USSR. A turning point for Libyan-Soviet relations occurred in 1975, when a Soviet government delegation headed by Alexei Kosygin visited Libya. During the visit, an agreement was reached on large deliveries of Soviet weapons to Libya.

After that, in parallel with the supply of weapons, cooperation between the two countries intensified in other areas. Numerous Soviet specialists arrived in Libya, who were engaged in the development of the oil industry, the transportation and re-export of oil, the construction of power lines, and the search for fertile lands. Gaddafi visited the USSR three times (in 1976, 1981 and 1985), met with Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev. At the same time, Gaddafi admitted that the USSR and the Libyan Jamahiriya were at different ideological poles, but the economic interests of Libya were given preference over political ones.

In the 1980s, Gaddafi became "enemy number one" for the United States, and Libya's reputation as a country supporting terrorism was firmly established in the West. The colonel himself, in an interview with the American press, called information about Libya's support for terrorist organizations a product of anti-Libyan propaganda. He emphasized that liberation movements, in particular in Palestine and Northern Ireland, should not be considered terroristic, while true terrorism lies in the policy of the United States.

Even under US President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981), US-Libyan relations became tense (in particular, six Libyan diplomats were expelled from the US), but tensions reached a critical point under Carter's successor Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), who called the colonel " the mad dog of the Middle East."

In 1981, the US administration accused Libya of preparing an assassination attempt on President Reagan. At the same time, the terrorists listed in the American list, who allegedly prepared the assassination attempt, belonged to one of the anti-Libyan organizations. In the very first year of his presidency, Reagan ordered that all Americans in Libya (about one and a half thousand people, mainly oil industry workers) leave this country under pain of criminal prosecution. In 1982, the US administration imposed a total embargo on Libyan oil supplies. Speaking out against the territorial claims of Libya in the Mediterranean coast, Reagan provoked Gaddafi to escalate tensions, when the colonel "swallowed the bait", the Americans shot down two Libyan fighters.

In 1984, there were several terrorist attacks that were associated with the activities of the Libyan authorities. There were two explosions in London that injured more than 50 people and were blamed on Libyan agents. In addition, the West suspected that Libya carried out mining in the Red Sea, which led to damage to 18 ships. The biggest resonance was received by the incident near the Libyan embassy, ​​or "People's Bureau", in London. Then, from the embassy building, someone opened fire on a demonstration of Libyan emigrants who opposed Gaddafi. As a result, 11 Libyan oppositionists were injured, and policewoman Yvonne Fletcher was killed. In the same year, Britain severed diplomatic relations with Libya.

In 1985, Palestinian terrorists hijacked the passenger ship Achille Lauro, killing an American passenger. The United States accused Libya of involvement in the incident. In January 1986, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Libya. On April 5, 1986, there was an explosion at the La Belle disco in West Berlin. Two American soldiers and a Turkish citizen were killed. The CIA officers established the guilt of Libyan agents.

On April 15, 1986, American planes bombed Gaddafi's residence in the suburbs of Tripoli. The Libyan leader himself survived, but 101 Libyans were killed in the bombing, including one and a half year old adopted daughter of Gaddafi. After that, the foreign activities of the Libyan regime subsided - until 1988.

December 21, 1988 was the most famous terrorist attack of all associated with the Gaddafi regime. Over the Scottish city of Lockerbie, a passenger plane of the American airline Pan American was blown up. As a result, 370 people died: all on board - 259 people - and 11 residents of Lockerbie.

After a three-year investigation, two main suspects were identified - they turned out to be members of the Libyan special services. The United States and Britain launched a campaign at the UN for the imposition of international sanctions against Libya, which was successful in 1992. A ban was imposed on tourist travel to Libya and the supply of spare parts and oil industry technology to the country.

1992 was a turning point for Libya's relations with Russia. First, the authorities of the USSR, and then the Russian Federation, invariably refused to support international sanctions against Libya, but on March 31, 1992, the Russian representative in the UN Security Council voted in favor of imposing sanctions.

Libya found itself in almost complete isolation, the standard of living, which had increased significantly during the years of Gaddafi's rule, began to decline. Under the pressure of circumstances, the leader of the revolution was forced to revise his political course.

Previously, following the direction set by Nasser, Gaddafi called for Arab unity, but in the 1990s he began to talk about pan-African integration, the creation of a kind of "United States of Africa" ​​or a confederation modeled on the European Union. One of the reasons for this reorientation was the fact that during the difficult period of isolation, the fraternal Arab states did not come to the aid of Libya. The idea of ​​pan-African integration was embodied in the African Union, which included 52 countries of the continent, the decision to establish which was made on March 2, 2001 and which officially appeared on July 9, 2002. The plans of the creators of the organization included the establishment of a pan-African parliamentary assembly, a court and a central bank.

In 1997, after the death of Princess Diana and her friend Dodi al-Faed in London, Gaddafi blamed the British authorities for what had happened. He demanded that the British intelligence agents who allegedly organized this murder be sent to Libya and stand trial there.

In the late 1990s, the settlement of Libya's relations with Western countries began, which eventually led to the release of the Jamahiriya from international isolation. With the mediation of the South African leader Nelson Mandela, negotiations were held on the extradition of the accused in the Lockerbie case. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also personally persuaded the colonel to extradite the accused. In 1999, both were handed over to the UN and put on trial in the Netherlands. In January 2001, one of the defendants was acquitted, the other convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The convict filed an appeal, but in 2002 it was rejected.

According to Gaddafi, after the extradition of the accused, the Lockerbie problem should have been settled. Indeed, in 1999, the UN sanctions were suspended, and living standards began to rise again in Libya. However, US sanctions still continued to apply. The restoration of US-Libyan relations has not yet been discussed: the Americans demanded that Libya officially admit its guilt for the explosion over Lockerbie and pay compensation to the families of the victims. The main obstacle in the eyes of the Americans was the alleged desire of Libya to create its own nuclear weapons.

For his part, Gaddafi did everything possible to normalize relations with the United States. After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, the colonel was one of the first Arab leaders to condemn what had happened. He met the US military operation in Afghanistan that followed the attacks with tacit consent, and moreover, he allegedly provided the Americans with intelligence about the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The Libyan leader even reconsidered his attitude on an extremely painful issue for the American leadership: he abandoned the idea of ​​destroying Israel and began calling for the peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and Jews within a single state, which the colonel called "Isratina."

However, the American leadership remained adamant. In June 2002, US Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton, in his speech, ranked Libya, Cuba and Syria, which allegedly sought to obtain weapons of mass destruction, in the so-called "axis of evil", which previously included Iran, Iraq and North Korea. In 2003, the US launched a war against Iraq, and Libya was called the likely next victim. In May 2003, Bolton made another speech in which he listed Libya as a "criminal country".

Under these conditions, Gaddafi took radical measures. In August 2003, Libya officially acknowledged its responsibility in the "Lockerbie case" and paid compensation to the relatives of the victims of the terrorist attack in the total amount of 2.7 billion dollars. Earlier, in 1999, Libya met the demands of France and paid 33 million dollars to the families of 170 people who died in 1989 when a UTA plane exploded over Niger. However, at that time there was no talk of an official recognition by the country of its responsibility for the terrorist attack. Libya also agreed to cooperate with Britain in the investigation into the death of Yvonne Fletcher in 1984, after which British-Libyan relations were restored.

In September 2003, UN sanctions were finally lifted from Libya. The relevant draft resolution was prepared by Great Britain and Bulgaria. At the same time, the leadership of Bulgaria denied any connection of its step with the case of the nurses arrested by the Libyan authorities four years earlier. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are on trial for allegedly infecting 426 Libyan children with the AIDS virus. In May 2004, the defendants were sentenced to death. Under pressure from the international community, the Libyan Supreme Court ordered a retrial, but the December 2006 verdict remained unchanged. The same sentence was confirmed in July 2007, but a few days after European countries paid Libya about $400 million in compensation, it was commuted to life imprisonment. In the same month, after negotiations between the Libyan authorities and the wife of French President Cecilia Sarkozy, all six convicts were deported to Bulgaria.

In December 2003, Gaddafi officially announced that his country was abandoning its plans to develop nuclear weapons. This move was met with the approval of foreign powers. In January 2004, Libya ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

In the same month, documentation on the Libyan nuclear program was sent to Washington. The documents were studied by specialists from the US, UK and the IAEA. In particular, it was possible to establish that Libya used the international network of illegal trade in nuclear technologies, at the center of which was the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and in which Iran and North Korea were also involved. It also became known that China's nuclear developments came into Libya's possession through Pakistan.

In March 2004, a significant event took place: British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid an official visit to Libya. That same month, Gaddafi gave a speech admitting that Libya's international isolation was the result of his misguided policies. In April, the Libyan leader made his first official visit to Europe in fifteen years. In Brussels, he met with the leadership of the European Union, in particular with the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi. In October 2004, EU sanctions were lifted from Libya, which had been in effect for 11 years.

The US lifted some of its sanctions in April 2004. In May 2006, the US State Department removed Libya from the official list of states that support terrorism. It was also announced the US intention to fully restore diplomatic relations with Libya.

In March 2007, Gaddafi gave an interview to BBC News in which he stated that Libya's decision not to build weapons of mass destruction was not adequately rewarded by the West. Nevertheless, as the Libyan leader emphasized, his country was not going to return to the previous aggressive policy and confrontation with Western countries.

In May 2007, it became clear that after a fifteen-year break, Libya could resume purchases of Russian weapons, and on a large scale: it was assumed that Libya would be among the ten largest buyers. In August of the same year, Libya signed a contract for a major purchase of weapons from France, and denied any connection between this agreement and the release of Bulgarian nurses from a Libyan prison, carried out shortly before that with French mediation. In December, during Gaddafi's visit to France, additional contracts between France and Libya worth 10 billion euros were announced, as well as talks for Libya to acquire military fighter jets and a nuclear reactor.

In April 2008, Vladimir Putin visited Libya as part of his last foreign trip in the rank of President of Russia. As a result of his negotiations with Gaddafi, a decision was made to convert Libya's $4.5 billion debt to Russia into Libyan orders to Russian companies. While this was originally a predominantly civilian order, according to some sources, the total amount of military contracts under this agreement could be from 2.3 to 3 billion dollars. Later, in early July, Alexei Miller, chairman of the board of the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, met with Gaddafi, and at the meeting they discussed the possibility of Gazprom buying all the volumes of its oil, gas and liquefied natural gas from Libya.

In mid-July 2008, Gaddafi's son Hannibal was detained in Switzerland on charges of beating hotel staff. In response, Libya applied a number of sanctions against Switzerland, including cutting off oil supplies to that country. After the return of Hannibal Gaddafi to his homeland, oil supplies were resumed at the end of July. Nevertheless, in October 2008, the Libyan authorities again announced the cessation of oil supplies to Switzerland and the withdrawal of their assets from Swiss banks.

Since the summer of 2008, there has been an improvement in relations between Libya and the United States. In August, the two countries signed an agreement to pay compensation for the Libyan-sponsored 1988 bombing of an American airliner and the 1986 West Berlin disco bombing on the one hand, and for the 1986 bombings of Tripoli and Benghazi on the other. In September 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a historic visit to Libya to discuss energy and counter-terrorism issues with Gaddafi. In October 2008, Libya paid monetary compensation to American victims of the US plane bombing, and in November it became known that the United States was sending its first ambassador to Libya in 36 years.

In late October - early November 2008, Gaddafi paid a visit to Russia. The day before it was reported that one of the topics of his talks with the Russian leadership would be the opening of a base for the Russian fleet in Libya. According to official reports, Gaddafi's meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin discussed cooperation in the military-technical and energy sectors. The episode in which Gaddafi received Prime Minister Putin and the French singer Mireille Mathieu, who was on tour in Moscow, in a Bedouin tent spread out in the Kremlin, gained fame. After Russia, Gaddafi visited Belarus and Ukraine.

February 2, 2009 at the summit of African heads of state Gaddafi was elected chairman of the African Union for a period of one year. At the same time, however, the summit participants rejected Libya's proposal to create a single African government.

Gaddafi has seven children: six sons and a daughter. One of the sources indicates that the colonel has four sons and a daughter, however, apparently, in this case we are talking only about his children from a valid marriage concluded in 1970. Two sons of Gaddafi, Saadi and Seif, were named as his likely successors at the head of the Libyan state.

The name Saadi al-Gaddafi is associated with sports. In 1996, he was appointed President of the Libyan Football Association. He managed to achieve the lifting of restrictions on mass football events, established in accordance with one of the ideas of the "Green Book": the leader of the revolution believed that sport should not be a spectacle, but an occupation. Saadi played for the Libyan national team and later for Italian top division clubs Perugia and Udinese. In addition, he invested in the football business. Later, in 2005, Saadi allegedly received a post in the Libyan special forces, which allowed him to noticeably increase his influence.

Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, head of the Gaddafi Charitable Foundation, gained notoriety for negotiating the release of hostages taken by terrorists in the Philippines and Afghanistan. He became a prominent proponent of dialogue with the West and the modernization of Libya. In January 2005, Seif told the press in an interview that Libya was about to undergo a transition from authoritarianism to a liberal model. According to Seif, the reforms had to be carried out in such a way as to avoid the concentration of national resources in the hands of a small group of oligarchs - as negative examples, the son of the leader of the revolution named Russia and Egypt. Gaddafi himself earlier, in 2003, recognized the need for economic reforms, but still adamantly denied the democratic nature of Western political systems.

There were reports in the press about other children of Gaddafi. His only daughter, Ayesha, was reported to have studied law in Paris and was one of the defense lawyers. former president Iraq Saddam Hussein. The youngest son of the leader of the revolution, Hannibal, has repeatedly appeared in scandalous stories. Abroad, he was detained for speeding on the road, and he resisted the police. Another of the colonel's sons, Motassim, allegedly made an unsuccessful attempt in 2001 to procure tanks and short-range missiles from abroad for the army brigade he leads.

Gaddafi is a believing Muslim. Russian orientalist Anatoly Yegorin wrote that even in childhood, the future leader memorized the Koran, and later made the Hajj, a traditional pilgrimage to the holy places of Islam. According to other sources, Gaddafi studied the Koran during his years of study at the military academy. One of Gaddafi's first steps after coming to power was the reform of the calendar: the names of the months of the year were changed in it, and the chronology began to be conducted from the year of the death of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. In 1998, BBC News reported that in last years the colonel often turned to religion in his work, in particular, he organized mass religious meetings and appeared on television with prayers.

At the same time, the BBC News article emphasized that Gaddafi had previously been a supporter of a purely secular society, but this is not true. In Libya, some social norms characteristic of Islamic countries were implemented, in particular, a ban on alcohol and Western music was established. On the other hand, the colonel is known as an opponent of discrimination against women, which is typical for Muslim societies. The emancipation of Libyan women led to the fact that at the beginning of the 21st century, many residents of the country no longer wore the traditional veil-hijab, and among university students the proportion of women exceeded 50 percent. In an interview, the colonel denied rumors of his polygamy and said that, in his opinion, a man should be content with one wife.

Despite his religiosity, the colonel did not allow the Islamists to deploy in Libya. In the 1970s, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were expelled from the country, and later, in 1986, 48 Islamic institutions in Libya were closed as hotbeds of extremism. In 2000, an opposition group based at the University of Benghazi was accused of extremism: many were then arrested, some were executed.

The Libyan leader leads an emphatically modest lifestyle. His residence is one of the buildings of the military garrison of Bab el-Aziziya in the suburbs of Tripoli. Nearby is a Bedouin tent Gaddafi. Nearby is the building of the former residence of Gaddafi, dilapidated during the American bombing of 1986, it was not repaired and serves as a memorial. In 2006, the tenth anniversary of the bombing was celebrated in Libya with a gala concert.

In a 2003 interview, Gaddafi cited horse riding, hunting, reading, and the Internet as his pastimes. He has a personal website, in addition, the colonel held an international beauty contest Miss Net World online.

There were rumors about the enormous capacity for work of Gaddafi: he allegedly worked 16-18 hours a day. At the same time, the colonel devoted considerable time to self-education: he studied history, literature, and philosophy of the countries of the world. Among the historical figures that he admired, Gaddafi called US President Abraham Lincoln and the leader of the Indian national liberation movement Mahatma Gandhi.

In addition to the "Green Book", Gaddafi wrote a work called "Long Live the State of the Oppressed!", published in 1997. In addition, Gaddafi's collection of stories-parables "Village, village. Earth, Earth. Suicide of an astronaut and other stories" was published. Abroad, the stories and essays of the colonel were published in the form of a collection of "Escape to Hell" (Escape to Hell).

The extravagance of the Libyan leader is widely known. He prefers bright, outlandish outfits, likes to travel in a big way. On foreign trips, he was accompanied by a detachment of armed female bodyguards, and he himself lived in Bedouin tents, which he later presented to Vladimir Putin, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. As BBC News reported, on some trips the Libyan leader even took camels with him to drink their milk abroad. At the same time, those who had to personally communicate with Gaddafi noted his relaxed and friendly manner.

In September 2006, London's English National Opera (ENO) hosted several performances of Gaddafi: A Living Myth, a musical show based on the biography of the Libyan leader. Produced by the electronic music group Asian Dub Foundation, the performance was met with negative reviews from critics.

On May 14, 2007, a message from the Palestinian news agency Ma "an was published in the media, according to which Gaddafi was hospitalized the day before in serious condition and fell into a coma: he allegedly had impaired blood circulation to the brain. Later that day, this message was refuted: the media reported that the Libyan leader personally called Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and dispelled rumors about his illness.

In 2008, Libya's negotiations with Russia and the United States intensified. In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Libya, and in October-November, Gaddafi paid a return visit to Moscow. In September, a historic meeting between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Gaddafi also took place in Libya. Energy cooperation remained a constant topic of negotiations with Libya for the United States and Russia, and cooperation in the military-technical sphere was also discussed with Russia.

In February 2011, mass demonstrations began in Libya against the Gaddafi regime. Forces loyal to the Libyan leader and foreign mercenaries called by him were sent to suppress the unrest. Nevertheless, the opposition managed to take control of the eastern part of the country. Gaddafi announced his readiness to take the toughest measures in the fight against the protesters. At the same time, the leaders of many states, as well as a number of Libyan officials and diplomats, condemned his actions. On March 17, 2011, the UN Security Council authorized the closure of airspace to Libyan aviation. On March 19, the coalition, which included France, the United States, Great Britain and a number of other countries, launched a military operation against the Libyan pro-government forces. At the end of March, an agreement was reached on the transfer of leadership of the operation to NATO. On June 27, against the backdrop of ongoing military operations and civil war, the Hague International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi on charges of crimes against humanity. By August 22, 2011, Libyan rebels captured most of the country and the capital Tripoli. On September 9, 2011, Interpol put on the international wanted list Muammar Gaddafi and his son Seif al-Islam, as well as the former director of Libyan military intelligence Abdullah al-Sanusi (Abdullah al-Sanusi). By that time, many countries, including the United States and Russia, had already recognized the legitimacy of the rebel government.

The ideological foundations of the Gaddafi regime were outlined in the "Green Book" written by him. The social order he advocated was a direct democracy based on a system of revolutionary committees, and is called the Jamahiriya. At one time, the Soviet Union had a significant influence on the ideology of Gaddafi, to which he turned, faced with rejection from the West. Once a staunch supporter of a secular society, in the later years of Gaddafi's rule, he began to turn to Islam frequently.

The official name of Libya under Gaddafi was the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. By the end of the 1980s, Gaddafi abandoned all official posts and began to be called a revolutionary leader, but in fact remained the head of state.

Gaddafi's extravagance gained worldwide fame. In particular, he preferred bright designer clothes, and on foreign trips he was accompanied by a detachment of armed female bodyguards. On some trips, the Libyan ruler took camels with him to drink their milk abroad. The Colonel's Peru owns a collection of short stories and an essay, Escape to Hell. Gaddafi had six sons and one daughter.

Muammar Gaddafi
Fraternal leader and leader of the revolution
September 1, 1969 - October 20, 2011

Successor: Position abolished
Chairman of the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council
September 8, 1969 - March 2, 1977
Predecessor: Position established
13th Prime Minister of Libya

13th Minister of Defense of Libya
January 16, 1970 - July 16, 1972
1st General Secretary of the General People's Congress of Libya
March 2, 1977 - March 2, 1979
Party: Arab Socialist Union (1972-1977)
Profession: Military
Religion: Islam
Birth: 7 June 1942 (Sirte, Misurata)
Death: October 20, 2011 (Sirte, Misurata)
Rank: Colonel (1969)

Muammar bin Muhammad Abu Menyar Abdel Salam bin Hamid al-Gaddafi(born June 7, 1940 or 1942, Sirte, Misurata, Italian Libya - died October 20, 2011, ibid) - Libyan statesman and military leader; head (actually) of the Libyan Jamahiriya (from September 1, 1969 to October 20, 2011), Chairman of the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council (1969-1977), Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Libya (1970-1972), General Secretary of the General People's Congress (1977-1979 ); colonel (since 1969). After Muammar Gaddafi refused all posts, he became known as the Fraternal Leader and Head of the First September great revolution Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or Fraternal leader and leader of the revolution.

Having overthrown the monarchy, he later formulated the "Third World Theory", set out in his three-volume work The Green Book, establishing a new form of government in Libya - the Jamahiriya. The Libyan leadership directed the proceeds from oil production to social needs, which made it possible by the mid-1970s to implement large-scale programs for the construction of public housing, the development of health care and education. On the other hand, Libya during the reign Muammar Gaddafi repeatedly accused of interfering in the affairs of foreign states. In 1977, there was a border war with Egypt, and in the 1980s, the country was embroiled in an armed conflict in Chad. As a supporter of pan-Arabism, Muammar Gaddafi made efforts to unite Libya with a number of countries, which ended unsuccessfully. Muammar Gaddafi provided support to numerous national liberation, revolutionary and terrorist organizations around the world. The high-profile terrorist attacks, which had a Libyan trace, became the basis for the bombing of the country in 1986 and the imposition of sanctions in the 1990s.

On June 27, 2011, during the Libyan civil war, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Muammar Gaddafi on charges of murder, illegal arrest and detention. Killed on October 20, 2011 after the capture of Sirte by the forces of the Transitional National Council.

The early years of Muammar Gaddafi

Muammar Gaddafi was born in 1940 or 1942 in a tent 30 km south of the city of Sirte in a Bedouin family belonging to the Arabized Berber tribe of al-Gaddafa. His grandfather was killed in 1911 by an Italian colonist. Remembering my childhood Muammar Gaddafi said: "We, the Bedouins, enjoyed freedom in the midst of nature, everything was pristinely clean ... There were no barriers between us and the sky."

At 9 years old Muammar Gaddafi went to elementary school. Following the father, who constantly wandered in search of new, more fertile lands, Muammar Gaddafi changed three schools: in Sirte, Sebha and Misurata.
Father Muammar Gaddafi later recalled: “I did not have the money to find a corner in Sirte for my son or entrust him to acquaintances. Muammar Gaddafi spent the night in the mosque, came 30 kilometers away on weekends to visit us, spent his holidays in the desert, near the tent.” In his youth, Muammar Gaddafi was a fan of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser; participated in anti-Israel protests during the Suez Crisis in 1956. In 1959, an underground organization was created in Sebha, one of the activists of which was Gaddafi.
On October 5, 1961, the organization held a protest demonstration against the secession of Syria from the United Arab Republic, culminating in a speech near the ancient wall of the city by the main organizer of the event - Muammar Gaddafi. A few days later, he was expelled from Sebha's boarding school.

Schoolboy participated in the underground political organization, led anti-colonial demonstrations against Italy. In 1961 Muammar Gaddafi created an underground organization that aimed to overthrow the monarchy, as in neighboring Egypt. In October of the same year, a youth demonstration began in the city of Sebha in support of the Algerian revolution. It immediately grew into a mass anti-monarchist uprising. The organizer and leader of the demonstration was Gaddafi. For that Muammar Gaddafi arrested and then expelled from the city. I had to continue my studies in Misurata. There Muammar Gaddafi entered the local lyceum, which he successfully completed in 1963.

In 1965 Muammar Gaddafi with the rank of lieutenant, he graduated from the military college in Benghazb and began serving in the signal troops at the Gar Younes military camp, then in 1966 he underwent retraining in the UK and at the same time was promoted to captain.

Al-Fateh (1969 military coup in Libya) led by Muammar Gaddafi

In 1964, under the leadership Muammar Gaddafi On the seashore near the village of Tolmeita, the 1st congress of an organization called the Free Unionist-Socialist Officers (OSOYUS) took place, which began underground preparations for a coup. One of the Rifi officers, Ali Sherif, later recalled the behavior of the young conspirators at the military college:
“I only kept in touch personally with Muammar Gaddafi and my platoon leader Bashir Khavvadi. The command followed our every step. We had to report where we were going, who we were meeting. For example, I have been asked this hundreds of times. Of course, I did not fulfill these requirements of the authorities, but M. Gaddafi was aware of my activities and found an opportunity to direct my illegal work. I was in sight myself M. Gaddafi due to its popularity among the cadets. But he knew how to control himself, behave impeccably, which delighted us. The authorities considered him a "bright head", an "incorrigible dreamer" and therefore condescendingly treated him and did not seriously suspect anything. M. Gaddafi it was enough to look at a new member of the organization once, and he almost unmistakably determined his capabilities, remembered him, although he did not suspect that he was at the head of the movement. Muammar Gaddafi, sociable, thoughtful cadet. In each military camp we had at least two informant officers. We were interested in the armament of the units, the lists of officers, their characteristics, the mood of the personnel.

In general terms, the plan for the performance of the officers was developed already in January 1969, but the three times appointed dates for the operation "El-Quds" ("Jerusalem") - March 12 and 24, as well as August 13 - were postponed for various reasons. In the early morning of September 1, detachments of members of the OSOYUS, led by the captain Gaddafi simultaneously began performances in Benghazi, Tripoli and other cities of the country. They quickly established control over major government and military installations. All entrances to the American bases were blocked in advance. King Idris I at that time was being treated in Turkey. Gaddafi recalled:
“I may have played a dominant role in our movement, but that was before X-hour. After that, I, perhaps, was rather one of the ordinary participants in the coup. On the 31st he was then in Benghazi, in the barracks of Ghar Yune. The beginning of the speech was scheduled for 2 hours 30 minutes in the morning simultaneously throughout the country, with the exception of the most distant garrisons. All combat groups were given the task of capturing the objects designated for them no later than 4 hours and 30 minutes.

Moghareif and Abdel Fattah were to take over the Benghazi radio station and direct operations from there. I also had to broadcast our first communiqué prepared in advance, as well as take the necessary countermeasures in case possible complications(foreign intervention or domestic resistance attempts).

At the appointed time, taking 2 soldiers with me, I went in a jeep to the radio station. I was followed in cars by a “capture group”. On the way, a convoy of cars crossed our path. I stopped to find out what was the matter. It turned out that Harruby, having captured the Birk barracks and taking command there, decided to head to the police school to neutralize it, since resistance could be organized there. We calmly continued to move. And they weren't late. The radio station was taken over at 4 o'clock in the morning. From the height of "my" object, I looked at the city and saw columns of trucks with soldiers moving from the port towards Benghazi. I realized that our plan is being carried out ... ""

At 7:00 a.m., the famous "Communiqué No. 1" went on the air, beginning with the words Muammar Gaddafi:
“Citizens of Libya! In response to the innermost aspirations and dreams that overwhelmed your hearts. In response to your ceaseless demands for change and spiritual rebirth, your long struggle in the name of these ideals. Heeding your call for rebellion, the army forces loyal to you took on this task and overthrew the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which made us sick and shocked us all.

Captain Gaddafi further said: “All who witnessed the sacred struggle of our hero Omar al-Mukhtar for Libya, Arabism and Islam! All those who fought on the side of Ahmed al-Sherif in the name of bright ideals ... All the sons of the desert and our ancient cities, our green fields and beautiful villages - go ahead!

One of the first was the message about the creation of the highest body of state power - the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The monarchy was overthrown. The country received a new name - the Libyan Arab Republic. On September 8, the IRC decided to award the 27-year-old captain Muammar Gaddafi rank of colonel and appointed him supreme commander of the armed forces of the country. He remained in this rank for life (until 1979 he was the only colonel in the country).

Muammar Gaddafi - about the head of state

The Chairman of the RSC was Muammar Gaddafi. The SRK included 11 officers who participated in the coup: Abdel Salam Jelloud, Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber, Awwad Hamza, Bashir Havwadi, Omar Moheishi, Mustafa al-Kharrubi, Khuwaildi al-Khmeidi, Abdel Moneim al-Huni, Muhammad Najm, Muhammad Mogaref and Mukhtar Gervi. October 16, 1969 Muammar Gaddafi, speaking at a mass rally, promulgated five principles of his policy: 1) complete evacuation of foreign bases from Libyan territory, 2) positive neutrality, 3) national unity, 4) Arab unity, 5) prohibition of political parties.

January 16, 1970 Muammar Gaddafi became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. One of the first activities led by Gaddafi the new leadership of the country was the evacuation of foreign military bases from Libyan territory. He then said: “Either the foreign bases will disappear from our land, in which case the revolution will continue, or if the bases remain, the revolution will perish. In April, the withdrawal of troops from the British naval base in Tobruk was completed, in June - from the largest American air base in the region, Wheelus Field, on the outskirts of Tripoli. On October 7 of the same year, all 20 thousand Italians were expelled from Libya. This day was declared the "day of vengeance". In addition, as a revenge for the brutal colonial war unleashed by fascist Italy in the 1920s, the graves of Italian soldiers were dug up.

In October 2004, after a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Muammar Gaddafi promised to change the "day of vengeance" to the "day of friendship", but this was not done. In 2009, during his historic visit to Italy, Gaddafi met with hundreds of exiled Italians. One of the exiles would later say of this meeting: Muammar Gaddafi told us that he was forced to expel us in order to save our lives, because the Libyan people wanted to kill us. But to save us, he also confiscated all of our property.”

During 1969-1971. foreign banks were nationalized, all landed property belonging to the Italians. The state also nationalized the property of foreign oil companies; the remaining oil companies were nationalized by 51%.

One of the first steps Gaddafi after coming to power, the calendar reform began: the names of the months of the year were changed in it, and the chronology began to be conducted from the year of the death of the prophet Muhammad. In November 1971, the Revolutionary Command Council set up a commission to review all of Libya's legislation in accordance with "the basic principles of the Islamic Sharia". Alcoholic drinks and gambling were banned in the country. April 15, 1973, during his speech in Zuar, Muammar Gaddafi proclaimed a cultural revolution, which included 5 points:
* annulment of all existing laws adopted by the previous monarchical regime and their replacement with laws based on Sharia;
* repression against communism and conservatism, purging all political opposition - those who opposed or resisted the revolution, such as communists, atheists, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, defenders of capitalism and agents of Western propaganda;
* the distribution of weapons among the people in such a way that public resistance would protect the revolution;
* administrative reform to end excessive bureaucratization, overreach and bribery;
* encouragement of Islamic thought, rejection of any ideas that do not correspond to it, especially ideas imported from other countries and cultures.

According to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan Cultural Revolution, unlike the Chinese Cultural Revolution, did not introduce anything new, but rather marked a return to the Arab and Islamic heritage.

The Gaddafi regime in the 1970s and 1990s had much in common with other similar post-colonial regimes in Africa and the Middle East. Rich in natural resources, but impoverished, backward, tribalist Libya, from which the attributes of Western life were expelled in the early years of Gaddafi's rule, was declared a country of a special development path. The official ideology (see below) was a mixture of extreme ethnic nationalism, rent-seeking planned socialism, state Islam, and left-leaning military dictatorship. Gaddafi at the head with the declared collegial management and "democracy". Despite this, and also the fact that Gaddafi at various times he supported various radical political movements; inside the country, his policy during these years was relatively moderate. The regime was supported by the army, the state apparatus and the rural population, for whom these institutions were in fact the only mechanism of social mobility.

"Jamahiriya" - Muammar Gaddafi's Third World Theory

Muammar Gaddafi maintained close ties with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Both leaders said they were trying to build a socialist society based on Islam, morality and patriotism. However, the deterioration of relations with Egypt after the death of Nasser and the rapprochement of his successor Sadat with the United States and Israel prompted Gaddafi in the early 70s to formulate their own ideology.

A peculiar concept of social development put forward by Muammar Gaddafi, is set out in his main work, the Green Book, in which the ideas of Islam are intertwined with the theoretical positions of the Russian anarchists Kropotkin and Bakunin. Jamahiriya (the official name of the political system of Libya) translated from Arabic means "the power of the masses."
green book Muammar Gaddafi was published in many languages ​​of the world

On March 2, 1977, at an extraordinary session of the General People's Congress (GPC) of Libya, held in Sebha, the "Declaration of Sebha" was promulgated, proclaiming the establishment of a new form of government - the Jamahiriya (from Arabic "jamahir" - masses). The Libyan Republic received its new name - the "Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" (SNLAD).

The Revolutionary Command Council and the government were dissolved. Instead, new institutions were created that corresponded to the "Jamahiri" system. The General People's Congress was declared the supreme body of the legislative, and the Supreme People's Committee formed by it instead of the government - the executive. Ministries were replaced by people's secretariats, at the head of which bodies of collective leadership were created - bureaus. Libyan embassies in foreign countries have also been transformed into people's bureaus. There is no head of state in Libya, in accordance with the principle of democracy.

Gaddafi (general secretary) and four of his closest associates, Major Abdel Salam Ahmed Jelloud, as well as generals Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, Mustafa al-Kharrubi and Khuwaildi al-Khmeidi, were elected to the General Secretariat of the GNC.

Exactly two years later, the five leaders resigned from government posts, leaving them to professional managers. Since Gaddafi officially called the Leader of the Libyan Revolution, and all five leaders - the Revolutionary leadership. Revolutionary Committees appeared in the political structure of Libya, designed to conduct through the system of people's congresses political line revolutionary leadership. Muammar Gaddafi officially is only the leader of the Libyan revolution, although his real influence on the process of making political, economic and military decisions is actually high.

Muammar Gaddafi stands for a democratic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the creation of a single Arab-Jewish state under the code name "Isratina".

Egyptian–Libyan War

Main article: Egyptian–Libyan War

In the mid-1970s, the orientation of Libya's foreign policy towards the USSR was already obvious, while Egypt was increasingly inclined to cooperate with Western countries and entered into a dialogue with Israel. The policy of the Egyptian President Sadat caused a negative reaction from the Arab countries, including Libya.

In the spring of 1976, Egypt, and then Tunisia and Sudan, accused Libya of organizing and financing their internal opposition circles. In July of the same year, Egypt and Sudan made direct accusations against Libya of supporting an unsuccessful coup attempt against Sudanese President Nimeiri, and already in August, the concentration of Egyptian troops on the Libyan border began. Tensions between the two countries escalated in April-May 1977, when demonstrators in both countries seized each other's consulates. In June Muammar Gaddafi ordered 225,000 Egyptians who worked and lived in Libya to leave the country before July 1, otherwise they will be arrested. On July 20 of the same year, Libyan artillery opened fire for the first time on Egyptian border posts in the area of ​​al-Sallum and Halfaya. The next day, Egyptian troops invaded Libyan territory. During the 4 days of fighting, both sides used tanks and aircraft. As a result of the mediation mission of Algeria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, by July 25 fighting stopped.

Foreign policy of Muammar Gaddafi

Almost immediately after coming to power Muammar Gaddafi, driven by the idea of ​​pan-Arabism, headed for the unification of Libya with neighboring Arab countries. On December 27, 1969, a meeting was held Gaddafi, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sudanese Prime Minister Jafar Nimeiri, which resulted in the signing of the Tripoli Charter, which contained the idea of ​​uniting the three states. On November 8, 1970, the "Cairo Declaration" was adopted on the creation of the Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) consisting of Egypt, Libya and Sudan. In the same year Muammar Gaddafi proposed to Tunisia to unite the two countries, but then President Habib Bourguiba rejected the proposal.

June 11, 1972 Gaddafi urged Muslims to fight the US and Britain, and also announced his support for black revolutionaries in the US, revolutionaries in Ireland and Arabs who want to join the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. On August 2, at a meeting in Benghazi, the Libyan leader and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat agreed on a phased unification of the two countries, which was scheduled for September 1, 1973. Showing more enthusiasm than the Egyptian president, Muammar Gaddaf and in July of the following year even organized a 40,000-strong march on Cairo to put pressure on Egypt, but the march was stopped 200 miles from the capital of Egypt. The union of Libya and Egypt did not work out. Further events only led to a deterioration in Egyptian-Libyan relations and later to an armed conflict. In January 1974, Tunisia and Libya announced the unification and formation of the Arab Islamic Republic, but a referendum on this issue never took place. Being in May-June 1978 on a visit to Algiers, Gaddafi proposed the unification of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia.

In August 1978, at the official invitation of the Libyan leadership, the leader of the Lebanese Shiites and the founder of the Amal movement, Imam Musa al-Sadr, arrived in the country, accompanied by two satellites, after which they mysteriously disappeared. On August 27, 2008, Lebanon accused Gaddafi in a plot to kidnap and illegally imprison the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shiites and demanded the arrest of the leader of Libya. As the magistrate noted, in committing this crime, Colonel Gaddafi"contributed to the unleashing of a civil war in Lebanon and an armed conflict between confessions." Libya has always denied allegations of involvement in the disappearance of the three Lebanese and claims that the imam and his companions left Libya in the direction of Italy.

During the Ugandan-Tanzanian war of 1978-1979. Muammar Gaddafi sent 2,500 Libyan troops to help Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. On December 22, 1979, the United States included Libya in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In the early 1980s The United States accused the Libyan regime of interfering in the internal affairs of at least 45 countries.

September 1, 1980, after secret negotiations between the representatives of Libya and Syria, Colonel Gaddafi invited Damascus to unite so that they could more effectively resist Israel, and on September 10 an agreement was signed to unite Libya and Syria. Libya and Syria were the only Arab countries that supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. This led to the fact that Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Libya on October 19 of the same year. After the suppression of an attempted coup d'état in Sudan in July 1976, Khartoum broke off diplomatic relations with the Libyan Jamahiriya, which the presidents of Sudan and Egypt accused of plotting to overthrow Nimeiri. That same month, a tripartite "holy alliance" of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sudan against Libya and Ethiopia was concluded at a conference of Islamic states in Jeddah. Feeling threatened by the alliance between Egypt and Sudan, Gaddafi in August 1981 formed a tripartite alliance of Libya with Ethiopia and South Yemen, aimed at countering Western, primarily American, interests in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
Muammar Gaddafi, President of Algeria Houari Boumedienne and Hafez Assad, December 1977.

August 13, 1983 during his visit to Morocco Muammar Gaddafi signed an Arab-African federal treaty with the Moroccan king Hassan II in the city of Oujda, providing for the creation of a union state of Libya and Morocco as the first step towards creating the Great Arab Maghreb. On August 31, a referendum was held in Morocco, as a result of which the treaty was approved by 99.97% of those who voted; The Libyan General People's Congress supported it unanimously.

Libya provided support to the Polisario front, leading a guerrilla war against Moroccan troops, and the signing of the treaty marked the end of Libyan assistance. The alliance began to unravel when Libya signed an alliance with Iran in 1985, and after Gaddafi criticized the Moroccan king for his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, King Hassan II in August 1986 completely annulled the agreement. The fall of the Nimeiri regime in Sudan at the same time led to an improvement in Sudanese-Libyan relations. Gaddafi stopped supporting the Sudan People's Liberation Army and welcomed the new government of General Abdel Rahman Swar al-Daghab. In 1985, Gaddafi announced the formation of the "National (Regional) Command of the Arab Revolutionary Forces" with the aim of "carrying out armed coups in the reactionary Arab countries and achieving Arab unity", as well as to "destroy the embassies, institutions and other objects of the United States and Israel in countries pursuing an anti-Libyan policy and supporting the United States.” The following year, during the International People's Congress, held in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was proclaimed the commander of a single all-Arab army and the ideological leader of all the liberation movements of the world. Muammar Gaddafi visited the Soviet Union three times - in 1976, 1981 and 1986 and met with L. I. Brezhnev and M. S. Gorbachev.

In the 1980s Gaddafi organized training camps in Libya for rebel groups from all over West Africa, including the Tuareg. In 1981, Somalia severed diplomatic relations with Libya, accusing the Libyan leader of supporting the Somali Democratic Salvation Front and the Somali National Movement. September 1, 1984 Muammar Gaddafi announced that he had sent troops and weapons to Nicaragua to help the Sandinista government in the fight against the United States. In March 1986, when Gaddafi hosted the Congress of the World Center for the Fight against Imperialism and Zionism, among his guests were representatives of the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatist group ETA and the leader of the radical American organization the Nation of Islam, African-American Muslim Louis Farrakhan. In the 1980s The leader of the Libyan revolution actively supplied weapons to the IRA, considering its activities part of the struggle against "British colonialism." Libya provided assistance to such national liberation and nationalist movements as the Palestinian organizations of the PLO, Fatah, PFLP and DFLP, the Mali Liberation Front, the United Patriotic Front of Egypt, the Moro National Liberation Front, the Arabistan Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Arabia, the African national congress, Popular Front for the Liberation of Bahrain, SWAPO, FRELIMO, ZAPU-ZANU. Libya was also suspected of supporting the Japanese Red Army. In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post given by him in 2003, Gaddafi explained:
“I supported the struggle for national liberation, not terrorist movements. I supported Mandela and Sam Nujoma, who became president of Namibia. I also supported the Palestine Liberation Organization. Today, these people are received with honor in the White House. And I'm still considered a terrorist. I was not wrong when I supported Mandela and the liberation movements. If colonialism returns to these countries, I will again support the movements for their liberation.”

Gaddafi took a tough stance towards Israel. On March 2, 1970, the Libyan leader appealed to 35 members of the Organization of African Unity to break off relations with Israel. In October 1973, the third Arab-Israeli war broke out. On October 16, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar unilaterally raised the selling price of their oil by 17% to $3.65. Three days later, in protest against Israel's support for the Yom Kippur War, Libya announced an oil embargo on the United States. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries followed suit, launching an oil embargo against countries that provided or helped to support Israel. In 1984 Gaddafi announced that
“The armed forces of Libya were created to liberate Palestine, to destroy the Zionist entity, and also to revise the world map created by the imperialists and draw new borders ... The armed people will take over the entire Arab world, they will rise to fight and cure the Zionist ulcer on their body '.'

Libya was suspected of mining the Red Sea in 1984, which damaged 18 ships. On April 17 of the same year, an incident was widely reported when fire was opened on Libyan demonstrators from the building of the Libyan People's Bureau (embassy) in London, as a result of which British police officer Yvonne Fletcher was killed and 11 more people were injured. After that, on April 22, the UK severed diplomatic relations with Libya. In a 2009 interview with Sky News, Gaddafi said, “She is not our enemy and we regret all the time and [express] our sympathy because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan embassy. But there is a problem that needs to be solved - who did it?

Domestic politics

Upon coming to power, the revolutionary government not only faced opposition to the new regime, but also internal problems within its ranks. On December 7, 1969, the SRK announced the prevention of a coup attempt by Lieutenant Colonels of Defense Minister Adam Havvaz and Interior Minister Musa Ahmed. A few months later, on July 24, 1970, Gaddafi announced the discovery of an "imperialist reactionary conspiracy" in Fezzan, in which the king's adviser Omar Shelhi, former prime ministers Abdel Hamid Bakush and Hussein Mazik were involved, and, as reported, the investigation established "the involvement of an American CIA to deliver weapons for the upcoming coup."

Political parties and opposition groups were banned under Law No. 71 of 1972. The only legal political party in the country in 1971-1977. was the Arab Socialist Union. In August 1975, after an unsuccessful coup attempt, one of Colonel Gaddafi's closest associates, Minister of Planning and Research Major Omar Moheishi, fled to Tunisia and then moved to Egypt. Jeune Afrique magazine wrote at the time:
"With the betrayal of Omar Moheisha, M. Gaddafi lost one of his longtime associates. They sat at the same desk in school, together they chose a military career with the firm intention of turning the Libyan army into an effective tool to overthrow the monarchy. More recently, in early August, Moheishi accompanied the head of state to Kampala for a UAE summit conference, then received a delegation of Lebanese journalists. Subsequently M. Gaddafi didn't say a single word about it. Meanwhile, one of the Libyan ministers whispered to a journalist friend that the Libyan leader "is very worried about the betrayal of his best friend."

The magazine then concluded: "The only thing that can console the colonel is the Nasser precedent: Rais was also betrayed by Marshal Amer, and he must part with his closest assistant." As A. Z. Egorin notes in his work “The Libyan Revolution”, Huni, Havvadi, Gervi, Najm and Hamza left the political arena after Moheishi. Of the 12 members of the SRK, Jelloud, Jaber, Harroubi and Khmeidi remained with Gaddafi.

Since 1980, more than 15 anti-Gaddafi Libyan exiles have been killed in Italy, England, West Germany, Greece and the US.

In October 1981, the Libyan National Salvation Front (FLNL) was formed, led by the former Libyan ambassador to India, Muhammad Yusuf al-Maghariaf, which was based in Sudan until the fall of the regime of President Nimeiri in 1985. The Front claimed responsibility for the attack on Gaddafi's headquarters in Bab al-Aziziyah on 8 May 1984. According to the Libyan National Salvation Front (FNSL), from 1969 to 1994. 343 Libyans who opposed the Gaddafi regime died, of which 312 people died in Libya (84 people died in prisons, 50 people were publicly executed by the verdict of revolutionary tribunals, 148 people died in plane crashes, car accidents and as a result of poisoning, 20 people died in armed clashes with regime supporters, four were shot dead by security agents and six people died because they were denied emergency medical care).

Sometimes Muammar Gaddafi showed great leniency towards dissidents. On March 3, 1988, he ordered the release of 400 political prisoners from Abu Sadim prison. In the presence of a crowd of thousands, Gaddafi, driving a bulldozer, broke the prison door and shouted to the prisoners: “You are free,” after which a crowd of prisoners rushed into the breach, she chanted: “Muammar, who was born in the desert, made prisons empty!”. The Libyan leader proclaimed this day the Day of victory, freedom and the triumph of democracy. A few days later, he tore up the "black lists" of persons suspected of dissident activity.

The army and the concept of "armed people" Muammar Gaddafi

By the time of the revolution, the strength of the armed forces of Libya totaled only 8.5 thousand people, but in the first 6 months of his reign Muammar Gaddafi at the expense of conscripts and by reassigning several hundred people from the paramilitary national security forces, he doubled the size of the Libyan army, bringing it to 76 thousand people by the end of the 1970s. In 1971, the Ministry of Defense was liquidated, the functions of which were assigned to the Main Military Command. During his speech on April 15, 1973 in Zuwara Gaddafi stated: "At a time when all regimes are usually fearful of their peoples and create an army and police for their protection, in contrast to them, I will arm the Libyan masses who believe in the al-Fatih revolution." Serious difficulties were caused by the program put forward by him back in 1979 to eliminate the traditional army by replacing it with an "armed people" capable, in the opinion of the Libyan leader, of repelling any external aggression. As part of the implementation of this idea, for almost a decade, measures have been proclaimed and taken to attract women to military service, militarize cities and educational institutions, as well as the creation of a kind of detachments of the people's militia. Revolutionary committees were created in the armed forces, which took control of the activities of officers. August 31, 1988 Colonel Gaddafi announced the "dissolution of the classical army and the traditional police" and the formation of formations of the "armed people". Developing his concept of an "armed people", he also announced the dissolution of the security apparatus. By a September 1989 decree, all former military ranks, and the General Provisional Defense Committee replaced the General Command of the Armed Forces. In June 1990, a voluntary Jamahiriya Guard was formed.

The exact date of birth of Muammar Gaddafi is still unknown. Most likely, they were born in 1940 or 1942 in a Bedouin tent near the city of Sirte.

Gaddafi's parents are representatives of the Berber tribe of al-Gaddafa. It is from the name of the tribe that his surname comes.

Muammar Gaddafi, despite the nomadic lifestyle of his parents, received an education. At the age of 9 he went to school. True, in 1959 he was expelled from there - for creating an underground group against the colonial regime.

At the same time, he actively participated in organizing youth demonstrations in support of the revolution in Algeria.

revolutionary activity

In 1965, Gaddafi received his first diploma - he graduated from a military college in Benghazi with the rank of lieutenant, began serving in the Ghar Younes military camp, then was sent to the UK for retraining and promoted to captain.

At the same time, Gaddafi continued to engage in a coup d'état. In 1964, he convened the first convention of the Free Unionist-Socialist Officers organization. The program of the movement formed the basis for the actions of Gaddafi's supporters in 1969.

In the early morning of September 1, the organization's detachments simultaneously began to protest in Benghazi, Tripoli and other cities of the country, quickly seized the main military and civilian facilities. The King of Libya, Idris the First, was undergoing treatment in Turkey at that time, he never returned back.

On September 1, Gaddafi announced in his radio message the creation of the highest body of state power - the Revolutionary Command Council. On September 8, Gaddafi was promoted to the rank of colonel - with him he ruled the country for more than 40 years.

The new principles of the state were as follows: the elimination of all foreign military bases on the territory of Libya, positive neutrality in international matters, national unity, Arab unity, and a ban on the activities of all political parties.

A year later, Muammar Gaddafi became Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Libya. Immediately after he came to power, more than 20 thousand Italians were expelled from Libya.

Foreign banks, lands, oil companies were nationalized. Three years later, Gaddafi engaged in a "cultural revolution": the introduction of new norms based on Sharia.

It was then that he announced the concept, called the "Third World Theory", and announced the creation of the Jamahiriya - the state of the masses.

Creation of the Jamahiriya

The Jamahiriya project involved the dissolution of the revolutionary command and government councils and the creation of people's committees. The General People's Congress became the supreme legislative body of power, and the Supreme People's Committee became the executive body. Ministries were replaced by people's secretariats headed by bureaus. Soon, the colonel began to purge the ranks of the VNK from opponents who were forced to flee abroad, but, despite this, died as a result of assassination attempts.

The proceeds from oil companies were directed to social projects - by the mid-70s, large-scale projects in housing, education and healthcare were implemented. At the same time, in the 80s, despite the global crisis, this policy was not changed.

Foreign policy

During the reign of Gaddafi, Libya fought several times - with Chad and Egypt. In addition, Gaddafi periodically sent Libyan troops to participate in internal African conflicts, in particular in Uganda and Somalia. The colonel has always adhered to anti-American and anti-Israeli positions, harshly criticizing the American and European courses.

Attacks in the West

In April 1986, three people were killed in an explosion in a Berlin nightclub. US President Ronald Reagan accused Tripoli of complicity in international terrorism and soon ordered the bombing of Libya.

According to the documents of the special services of the GDR, the colonel was personally behind the terrorist attack in Berlin, and in 2001 a German court laid the blame for the terrorist attack on the official Tripoli.

This is followed by two explosions at once: in December 1988, a passenger Boeing 747 was blown up in the skies over Scotland (as a result, 270 people died), and in September 1989, a DC-10 plane exploded in Niger, flying from Brazzaville to Paris, 9170 victims). In the West, it was believed that these attacks were also ordered by Gaddafi. In 1992, the UN Security Council authorized the imposition of sanctions against Tripoli.

The West banned the sale of many types of equipment for transporting and refining oil, and Libyan holdings abroad were also frozen.

Tripoli soon acknowledged responsibility for the attack and paid the relatives of the victims compensation in the amount of $200 million, after which relations with the West sharply stabilized. In 2003, sanctions against Libya were lifted.

In the 2000s, there were rumors that Gaddafi sponsored the election campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, who for the time being lobbied for the interests of Tripoli in the international arena. In addition, until recently, the press was full of reports that Gaddafi personally selected girls for the escort service of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Last war

At the beginning of 2011, revolutions took place in a number of countries in the Middle East, which were called the "Arab Spring". After Tunisia and Egypt, the wave of protests reached Libya.

The rebels were operating from Benghazi. Mass demonstrations took place there, which spread throughout the country. The rebels were supported by NATO and the UN Security Council. In August they managed to take Tripoli.

On October 20, 2011, they announced the capture of Gaddafi's hometown, Sirte, and the death of the colonel himself.

Muammar Mohammed Abdel Salam Hamid Abu Menyar al-Gaddafi (arab. معمر القذافي). Born June 7 (June 19), 1940 or September 1942 in Sirte (Misrata, Italian Libya) - died October 20, 2011 in Sirte (Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya). Libyan statesman and military figure, politician and publicist; de facto head of Libya 1969-2011, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (1969-1977), Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Libya (1970-1972), General Secretary of the General People's Congress (1977-1979); Colonel (since 1969), Supreme Commander of the Libyan Armed Forces (1969-2011). After Gaddafi refused all posts, he became known as the Fraternal Leader and Leader of the September 1st Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or Fraternal Leader and Leader of the Revolution.

Having overthrown the monarchy, he later formulated the "Third World Theory", set out in his three-volume work "Green Book", establishing in Libya a new political regime (or, as some authors believe, a form of government) - "Jamahiriya" (arab. جماهيرية‎‎) . The Libyan leadership directed the proceeds from oil production to social needs, which made it possible by the mid-1970s to implement large-scale programs for the construction of public housing, the development of health care and education. On the other hand, Libya during the reign of Gaddafi was repeatedly accused of interfering in the affairs of foreign states.

In 1977, there was a border military conflict with Egypt, and in the 1980s, the country was embroiled in a civil war in Chad. Being a supporter of pan-Arabism, Gaddafi made efforts to unite Libya with a number of countries, which ended unsuccessfully. He provided financial and other support to numerous national liberation, revolutionary and terrorist organizations around the world.

High-profile terrorist attacks, in connection with which the Libyan leadership was accused, became the formal basis for the American bombing of the country in 1986 and the imposition of sanctions in the 1990s.

On June 27, 2011, during the Libyan civil war, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Muammar Gaddafi on charges of murder, illegal arrest and detention. During the civil war, the opposition forces, with the military intervention of the NATO bloc, gradually established control over the country. He was killed on October 20, 2011 during the capture of Sirte by the forces of the Transitional National Council.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, which took place under democratic slogans, marked the beginning of a period of instability and an armed struggle for power in Libya, leading to the actual disintegration of the country into a number of independent state formations, the growth of the influence of Islamists and tribalism.

Muammar Gaddafi was born in 1940 or 1942 (June 7 or June 19, or in spring or September) in a tent in Wadi Jaraf south of the city of Sirte to a Bedouin family belonging to the Arabized Berber tribe of al-Gaddafa.

Subsequently, Gaddafi repeatedly emphasized his Bedouin origin: “We, the sons of the desert, placed our tents at a distance of at least twenty kilometers from the coast. In my early childhood, I never saw the sea.”

He was the last child and only son in the family. His grandfather was killed in 1911 by an Italian colonist. Recalling his childhood, Gaddafi said: “We, the Bedouins, enjoyed freedom in the midst of nature, everything was pristine clean ... There were no barriers between us and the sky”.

At the age of 9 he went to elementary school. Following his father, who constantly wandered in search of new, more fertile lands, Muammar changed three schools: in Sirte, Sebha and Misurata. The father later recalled: “I did not have the money to find a corner in Sirte for my son or entrust it to acquaintances. He spent the night in the mosque, came 30 kilometers away on weekends to visit us, spent his holidays in the desert, near the tent..

In his youth, Muammar Gaddafi was a fan of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser; participated in anti-Israel protests during the Suez Crisis in 1956.

In 1959, an underground organization was created in Sebha, one of the activists of which was Gaddafi. On October 5, 1961, the organization held a protest demonstration against Syria's secession from the United Arab Republic, culminating in a speech near the ancient wall of the city by the main organizer of the event, Muammar Gaddafi. A few days later, he was expelled from Sebha's boarding school. In 1962 he graduated from the Faculty of History of the University of Benghazi.

As a schoolboy, he participated in an underground political organization, held anti-colonial demonstrations against Italy. In 1961, Muammar created an underground organization that aimed to overthrow the monarchy, as in neighboring Egypt. In October of the same year, a youth demonstration began in the city of Sebha in support of the Algerian revolution. It immediately grew into a mass anti-monarchist uprising. The organizer and leader of the demonstration was Gaddafi. For this he was arrested and then expelled from the city. I had to continue my studies in Misurata. There he entered the local lyceum, which he successfully completed in 1963.

In 1965, Muammar Gaddafi, with the rank of lieutenant, graduated from a military college in Benghazi and began serving in the signal troops at the Ghar Younes military camp, then in 1966 he underwent retraining in the UK and at the same time was promoted to captain. During an internship in the UK, lieutenants Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis Jaber stood out in a group of Libyan officers for their strict adherence to Islamic customs, refusing alcohol and pleasure trips. Before the overthrow of the monarchy in Libya in the fall of 1969, he served in the engineering troops.

In 1964, under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi, on the seashore near the village of Tolmeita, the 1st congress of an organization called Free Unionist-Socialist Officers (OSOYUS) took place, which adopted the slogans of the Egyptian revolution of 1952 "Freedom, socialism, unity." In the underground, the OSOYUS began preparations for a coup.

In general terms, the plan for the performance of the officers was developed already in January 1969, but the three times appointed dates for the operation "El-Quds" ("Jerusalem") - March 12 and 24, as well as August 13 - were postponed for various reasons. In the early morning of September 1, detachments of members of the OSOYUS, led by Captain Gaddafi, simultaneously began to speak in Benghazi, Tripoli and other cities of the country. They quickly established control over major government and military installations. All entrances to the American bases were blocked in advance. King Idris I at that time was being treated in Turkey.

At 7:00 a.m., the famous "Communiqué No. 1" was aired, beginning with the words of Gaddafi: "Citizens of Libya! In response to the secret aspirations and dreams that overwhelmed your hearts. In response to your unceasing demands for change and spiritual rebirth, your long struggle in the name of these ideals. Heeding your call for rebellion, your loyal army forces have taken on this task and overthrew a reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which made us sick and shocked us all...".

Captain Gaddafi further said: “All who witnessed the sacred struggle of our hero Omar al-Mukhtar for Libya, Arabism and Islam! All those who fought on the side of Ahmed al-Sherif in the name of bright ideals ... All the sons of the desert and our ancient cities, our green fields and beautiful villages - go ahead!.

One of the first was the message about the creation of the highest body of state power - the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The monarchy was overthrown. The country received a new name - the Libyan Arab Republic. On September 8, the IRC decided to award the 27-year-old captain Gaddafi the rank of colonel and appointed him supreme commander of the country's armed forces. He remained in this rank for life (until 1979 he was the only colonel in the country).

Muammar Gaddafi became the chairman of the SRC. The SRK included 11 officers who participated in the coup: Abdel Salam Jellud, Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber, Awwad Hamza, Bashir Havwadi, Omar Moheishi, Mustafa al-Kharrubi, Mohammed Najm, Khuwaildi al-Khmeidi, Abdel Moneim al-Huni, Muhammad Mogaref and Mukhtar Gervi. On October 16, 1969, Gaddafi, speaking at a mass rally, promulgated five principles of his policy: 1) complete evacuation of foreign bases from Libyan territory, 2) positive neutrality, 3) national unity, 4) Arab unity, 5) prohibition of political parties.

January 16, 1970 Muammar Gaddafi became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. One of the first activities led by Gaddafi's new leadership was the evacuation of foreign military bases from Libyan territory. He then said: "Either the foreign bases will disappear from our land, in which case the revolution will continue, or if the bases remain, the revolution will perish."

On March 31, 1970, the withdrawal of troops from the British naval base El Adem in the Tobruk region was completed, on June 11 - from the largest US air force base in the region, Wheelus Field, on the outskirts of Tripoli. The base began to be called Okba Ben Nafia after the Arab commander of the 7th century who conquered Libya. On October 7 of the same year, all 20 thousand Italians were expelled from Libya. This day was declared the "day of vengeance". In addition, as a revenge for the brutal colonial war unleashed by fascist Italy in the 1920s, the graves of Italian soldiers were destroyed.

In October 2004, after a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Gaddafi promised to change the "day of vengeance" into a "day of friendship", but this was not done. In 2009, during his historic visit to Italy, he met with hundreds of exiled Italians. One of the exiles later said about this meeting: “Gaddafi told us that he was forced to expel us in order to save our lives in this way, because the Libyan people wanted to kill us. But to save us, he also confiscated all of our property.”

During the years 1969-1971, foreign banks were nationalized, all land property owned by Italians. The state also nationalized the property of foreign oil companies; the remaining oil companies were nationalized by 51%.

One of Gaddafi's first steps after coming to power was the reform of the calendar: the names of the months of the year were changed in it, and the chronology began to be conducted from the year of the death of the Prophet Muhammad. In November 1971, the Revolutionary Command Council set up a commission to review all of Libya's legislation in accordance with "the basic principles of the Islamic Sharia". Alcoholic drinks and gambling were banned in the country.

April 15, 1973, during his speech in Zuar, Muammar Gaddafi proclaimed a cultural revolution, which included five points:

the annulment of all existing laws passed by the previous monarchical regime and their replacement with laws based on Sharia;
repression against communism and conservatism, purging all political opposition - those who opposed or resisted the revolution, such as communists, atheists, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, defenders of capitalism and agents of Western propaganda;
the distribution of weapons among the people in such a way that public resistance would defend the revolution;
administrative reform to end excessive bureaucratization, overreach and bribery;
encouragement of Islamic thought, rejection of any ideas that do not correspond to it, especially ideas imported from other countries and cultures.

According to Gaddafi, the Libyan Cultural Revolution, unlike the Chinese Cultural Revolution, did not introduce anything new, but rather marked a return to the Arab and Islamic heritage. Sharia laws have been introduced in the country since 1979.

The Gaddafi regime in the 1970s and 1990s had much in common with other similar post-colonial regimes in Africa and the Middle East. Rich in natural resources, but impoverished, backward, tribalist Libya, from which the attributes of Western life were expelled in the early years of Gaddafi's rule, was declared a country of a special development path. The official ideology was a mixture of extreme ethnic nationalism, rent-seeking planned socialism, state Islam and a "leftist" military dictatorship headed by Gaddafi, with a declared collegial government and "people's power".

Despite this, and also the fact that Gaddafi supported various radical political currents at different times, his policy inside the country during these years was relatively moderate. The regime was supported by the army, the state apparatus and the rural population, for whom these institutions were in fact the only mechanism of social mobility.

Having come to power, Gaddafi began to generalize his political and socio-economic views into a concept put forward in opposition to the two main world ideologies - Western and socialist. A peculiar concept of social development, put forward by Gaddafi, is set forth in his main work, the Green Book, in which the ideas of Islam are intertwined with the theoretical positions of the Russian anarchists Kropotkin and Bakunin. Jamahiriya (the official name of the political system of Libya) translated from Arabic means "the power of the masses."

On March 2, 1977, at an extraordinary session of the General People's Congress (GPC) of Libya, held in Sebha, the Sebha Declaration was promulgated, proclaiming the establishment of a new form of government - the Jamahiriya (from Arabic "jamahir" - masses). The Libyan Republic received its new name - the "Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" (SNLAD).

The Revolutionary Command Council and the government were dissolved. Instead, new institutions were created that corresponded to the "Jamahiri" system. The General People's Congress was declared the supreme body of the legislative, and the Supreme People's Committee formed by it instead of the government - the executive. Ministries were replaced by people's secretariats, at the head of which bodies of collective leadership were created - bureaus. Libyan embassies in foreign countries have also been transformed into people's bureaus. The head of state in Libya, in accordance with the principle of democracy, did not exist.

Gaddafi (general secretary) and four of his closest associates, Major Abdel Salam Ahmed Jelloud, as well as generals Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, Mustafa al-Kharrubi and Khuwaildi al-Khmeidi, were elected to the General Secretariat of the GNC. In October 1978, Gaddafi proclaimed "the separation of the revolution from power."

Exactly two years later, the five leaders resigned from government posts, leaving them to professional managers. Since then, Gaddafi has been officially called the Leader of the Libyan Revolution, and all five leaders have been called the Revolutionary Leadership. Revolutionary committees appeared in the political structure of Libya, designed to carry out the political line of the revolutionary leadership through the system of people's congresses. Muammar Gaddafi was officially only the leader of the Libyan revolution, although his real influence on the process of making political, economic and military decisions was actually high.

Muammar Gaddafi advocated a democratic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the creation of a single Arab-Jewish state under the code name "Isratina".

In the mid-1970s, the orientation of Libya's foreign policy towards the USSR was already obvious, while Egypt was increasingly inclined to cooperate with Western countries and entered into a dialogue with Israel. The policy of the Egyptian President Sadat caused a negative reaction from the Arab countries, including Libya.

In the spring of 1976, Egypt, and then Tunisia and Sudan, accused Libya of organizing and financing their internal opposition circles. In July of the same year, Egypt and Sudan made direct accusations against Libya of supporting an unsuccessful coup attempt against Sudanese President Nimeiri, and already in August, the concentration of Egyptian troops on the Libyan border began. Tensions between the two countries escalated in April-May 1977, when demonstrators in both countries seized each other's consulates. In June, Gaddafi ordered 225,000 Egyptians who worked and lived in Libya to leave the country by July 1, otherwise they would be arrested. On July 20 of the same year, Libyan artillery opened fire for the first time on Egyptian border posts in the area of ​​al-Sallum and Halfaya. The next day, Egyptian troops invaded Libyan territory. During the four days of fighting, both sides used tanks and aircraft. As a result of the mediation mission of Algeria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, hostilities ceased by 25 July.

Almost immediately after coming to power, Muammar Gaddafi, driven by the idea of ​​pan-Arabism, headed for the unification of Libya with neighboring Arab countries. On December 27, 1969, a meeting was held between Gaddafi, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sudanese Prime Minister Jafar Nimeiri, as a result of which the Tripoli Charter was signed, containing the idea of ​​uniting the three states. On November 8, 1970, the "Cairo Declaration" was adopted on the creation of the Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) consisting of Egypt, Libya and Sudan. In the same year, Gaddafi proposed to Tunisia to unite the two countries, but then President Habib Bourguiba rejected the proposal.

June 11, 1972 Gaddafi urged Muslims to fight the US and Britain, and also announced his support for black revolutionaries in the United States, revolutionaries in Ireland and Arabs who want to join the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. On August 2, at a meeting in Benghazi, the Libyan leader and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat agreed on a phased unification of the two countries, which was scheduled for September 1, 1973. More enthusiastic than the Egyptian president, Muammar Gaddafi even organized a 40,000-strong march on Cairo the following July to put pressure on Egypt, but the march was stopped 200 miles from the Egyptian capital.

The union of Libya and Egypt did not work out. Further events only led to a deterioration in Egyptian-Libyan relations and later to an armed conflict. With the mediation of Gaddafi, from November 26 to 28, 1972, a meeting of the presidents of North (YAR) and South Yemen (PDRY) took place in Tripoli, which ended with the signing of the "Full text of the Unity Agreement between the two parts of Yemen." The YAR Advisory Council, at its meeting on December 10, "thanked Gaddafi for the efforts he has made in the implementation of Yemeni unity, which is a step towards full Arab unity." In January 1974, Tunisia and Libya announced the unification and formation of the Arab Islamic Republic, but a referendum on this issue never took place. Being in May-June 1978 on a visit to Algiers, Gaddafi proposed the unification of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia.

In August 1978, at the official invitation of the Libyan leadership, the leader of the Lebanese Shiites and the founder of the Amal movement, Imam Musa al-Sadr, arrived in the country, accompanied by two satellites, after which they mysteriously disappeared. On August 27, 2008, Lebanon accused Gaddafi of plotting to kidnap and illegally imprison the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shiites and demanded the arrest of the Libyan leader. As the investigator noted, by committing this crime, Colonel Gaddafi "contributed to the unleashing of a civil war in Lebanon and an armed conflict between confessions." Libya has always denied allegations of involvement in the disappearance of the three Lebanese and claims that the imam and his companions left Libya in the direction of Italy.

During the Ugandan-Tanzanian war of 1978-1979, Muammar Gaddafi sent 2,500 Libyan troops to help Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. On December 22, 1979, the United States included Libya in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In the early 1980s, the United States accused the Libyan regime of interfering in the internal affairs of at least 45 countries.

On September 1, 1980, after secret negotiations between the representatives of Libya and Syria, Colonel Gaddafi proposed to Damascus to unite so that they could more effectively resist Israel, and on September 10 an agreement was signed to unite Libya and Syria. Libya and Syria were the only Arab countries that supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. This led to the fact that Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Libya on October 19 of the same year.

After the suppression of an attempted coup d'état in Sudan in July 1976, Khartoum broke off diplomatic relations with the Libyan Jamahiriya, which the presidents of Sudan and Egypt accused of plotting to overthrow Nimeiri. That same month, a tripartite "holy alliance" of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sudan against Libya and Ethiopia was concluded at a conference of Islamic states in Jeddah. Feeling threatened by the alliance between Egypt and Sudan, Gaddafi in August 1981 formed a tripartite alliance of Libya with Ethiopia and South Yemen, aimed at countering Western, primarily American, interests in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

In November 1982, Gaddafi made a proposal to create a special inter-African body to resolve controversial political problems peacefully, which would avoid military conflicts on the continent.

On August 13, 1983, during his visit to Morocco, Muammar Gaddafi signed with the Moroccan king Hassan II in the city of Oujda the Arab-African federative treaty, which provides for the creation of a union state of Libya and Morocco as the first step towards the creation of the Great Arab Maghreb. On August 31, a referendum was held in Morocco, as a result of which the treaty was approved by 99.97% of those who voted; The Libyan General People's Congress supported it unanimously. Libya provided support to the Polisario front, leading a guerrilla war against Moroccan troops, and the signing of the treaty marked the end of Libyan assistance. The alliance began to fall apart when Libya signed an alliance with Iran in 1985, and after Gaddafi criticized the Moroccan king for his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, King Hassan II annulled the treaty altogether in August 1986.

The fall of the Nimeiri regime in Sudan at the same time led to an improvement in Sudanese-Libyan relations. Gaddafi stopped supporting the Sudan People's Liberation Army and welcomed the new government of General Abdel Rahman Swar al-Daghab.

In 1985, Gaddafi announced the formation of the "National (Regional) Command of the Arab Revolutionary Forces" with the aim of "carrying out armed coups in the reactionary Arab countries and achieving Arab unity", as well as to "destroy the embassies, institutions and other objects of the United States and Israel in countries pursuing an anti-Libyan policy and supporting the United States.” The following year, during the International People's Congress, held in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was proclaimed the commander of a single pan-Arab army and the ideological leader of all the liberation movements of the world. Muammar Gaddafi visited the Soviet Union three times - in 1976, 1981 and 1986 and met with Leonid Brezhnev and.

In the 1980s, Gaddafi organized training camps in Libya for rebel groups from all over West Africa, including the Tuareg.

In 1981, Somalia severed diplomatic relations with Libya, accusing the Libyan leader of supporting the Somali Democratic Salvation Front and the Somali National Movement.

On September 1, 1984, Muammar Gaddafi announced that he had sent troops and weapons to Nicaragua to help the Sandinista government fight the United States.

In March 1986, when Gaddafi hosted the Congress of the World Center for the Fight against Imperialism and Zionism, among his guests were representatives of the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatist group ETA and the leader of the radical American organization the Nation of Islam, African-American Muslim Louis Farrakhan.

In the 1980s, the leader of the Libyan revolution actively supplied weapons to the IRA, considering its activities part of the struggle against "British colonialism."

Libya provided assistance to such national liberation and nationalist movements as the Palestinian organizations of the PLO, Fatah, PFLP and DFLP, the Mali Liberation Front, the United Patriotic Front of Egypt, the Moro National Liberation Front, the Arabistan Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Arabia, the African National Congress, the People's Bahrain Liberation Front, SWAPO, FRELIMO, ZAPU-ZANU. Libya was also suspected of supporting the Japanese Red Army.

Gaddafi took a tough stance towards Israel. On March 2, 1970, the Libyan leader appealed to 35 members of the Organization of African Unity to break off relations with Israel. In October 1973, the third Arab-Israeli war broke out. On October 16, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar unilaterally raised the selling price of their oil by 17% to $3.65. Three days later, in protest against Israel's support in the Yom Kippur War, Libya announced an oil embargo USA. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries followed suit, launching an oil embargo against countries that provided or helped to support Israel.

Libya was suspected of mining the Red Sea in 1984, which damaged 18 ships. On April 17 of the same year, an incident was widely reported when fire was opened on Libyan demonstrators from the building of the Libyan People's Bureau (embassy) in London, as a result of which British police officer Yvonne Fletcher was killed and 11 more people were injured. After that, on April 22, the UK severed diplomatic relations with Libya. In a 2009 interview with Sky News, Gaddafi said, “She is not our enemy and we are sorry all the time and [express] our sympathy because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan embassy. But there is a problem that needs to be solved - who did it?

Upon coming to power, the revolutionary government not only faced opposition to the new regime, but also internal problems within its ranks. On December 7, 1969, the SRK announced the prevention of a coup attempt by Lieutenant Colonels of Defense Minister Adam Havvaz and Interior Minister Musa Ahmed. A few months later, on July 24, 1970, Gaddafi announced the discovery of an "imperialist reactionary conspiracy" in Fezzan, in which the king's adviser Omar Shelhi, former prime ministers Abdel Hamid Bakush and Hussein Mazik were involved, and, as reported, the investigation established "the involvement of an American CIA to deliver weapons for the upcoming coup."

Political parties and opposition groups were banned under Law No. 71 of 1972. The only legal political party in the country in 1971-1977 was the Arab Socialist Union. On May 31, 1972, a law was promulgated banning worker and student strikes and demonstrations and imposing strict controls on the press. In August 1975, after an unsuccessful coup attempt, one of Colonel Gaddafi's closest associates, the Minister of Planning and Scientific Research, Major Omar Moheishi, fled to Tunisia and then moved to Egypt.

In November 1985, Morocco extradited Omar Moheishi to the Libyan authorities and escorted him to Tripoli, where, according to American journalists, citing the CIA, he was killed "at the plane's ramp on the runway." As A. Z. Egorin notes in his work “The Libyan Revolution”, Huni, Havvadi, Gervi, Najm and Hamza left the political arena after Moheishi. Of the 12 members of the SRK, Jelloud, Jaber, Harroubi and Khmeidi remained with Gaddafi.

Since 1980, more than 15 anti-Gaddafi Libyan exiles have been killed in Italy, England, West Germany, Greece and the US. In October 1981, the Libyan National Salvation Front (FNSL) was formed, led by the former Libyan ambassador to India, Muhammad Yusuf al-Magariaf, who was based in Sudan until the fall of the regime of President Nimeiri in 1985. On May 17, 1984, Gaddafi's residence, Bab al-Aziziya, was fired at with rockets, and 15 of the 20 attackers were killed in the ensuing firefight. The Libyan National Salvation Front claimed responsibility for the attack on the residence of the Libyan leader. According to the National Salvation Front of Libya (FNSL), between 1969 and 1994, 343 Libyans who opposed the Gaddafi regime died, of which 312 people died in Libya (84 people died in prisons, 50 people were publicly shot by the verdict of the revolutionary tribunals , 148 people died in plane crashes, car crashes and poisoning, 20 people died in armed clashes with regime supporters, four were shot dead by security agents and six people died because they were denied emergency medical care).

At times, Muammar Gaddafi showed great leniency towards dissidents. On March 3, 1988, he ordered the release of 400 political prisoners from the Abu Sadim prison. In the presence of a crowd of thousands, Gaddafi, driving a bulldozer, broke the prison door and shouted to the prisoners: “You are free,” after which a crowd of prisoners rushed into the breach, she chanted: “Muammar, who was born in the desert, made the prisons empty!” The Libyan leader proclaimed this day the Day of victory, freedom and the triumph of democracy. A few days later, he tore up the "black lists" of persons suspected of dissident activity.

By the time of the revolution, the strength of the armed forces of Libya totaled only 8.5 thousand people, but in the first six months of his reign, Muammar Gaddafi, at the expense of conscripts and by resubordinating several hundred people from the paramilitary national security forces, doubled the size of the Libyan army, bringing it to an end 1970s to 76 thousand people. In 1971, the Ministry of Defense was liquidated, the functions of which were assigned to the Main Military Command.

During his speech on April 15, 1973 in Zuwar, Gaddafi stated: "At a time when all regimes are usually afraid of their peoples and create an army and police for their protection, in contrast to them, I will arm the Libyan masses who believe in the al-Fatih revolution." Serious difficulties were caused by the program put forward by him back in 1979 to eliminate the traditional army by replacing it with an "armed people" capable, in the opinion of the Libyan leader, of repelling any external aggression. As part of the implementation of this idea, for almost a decade, measures were proclaimed and taken to attract women to military service, militarization of cities and educational institutions, as well as the creation of a kind of militia units.

Revolutionary committees were created in the armed forces, which took control of the activities of officers. On August 31, 1988, Colonel Gaddafi announced the "dissolution of the classical army and traditional police" and the formation of "armed people" formations. Developing his concept of an "armed people", he also announced the dissolution of the security apparatus. By a September decree of 1989, all former military ranks were abolished, and the General Provisional Defense Committee replaced the General Command of the Armed Forces. In June 1990, the voluntary Jamahiriya Guard was formed.

Before the overthrow of the monarchy, in 1968, 73% of the country's population was illiterate. During the first decade of revolutionary changes in Libya, 220 libraries and reading rooms, 25 knowledge dissemination centers, about 20 national cultural centers and 40 sports clubs were opened. By 1977, the literacy rate had risen to a total of 51%. From 1970 to 1980, more than 180 thousand apartments were built in the country, which made it possible to provide modern housing for about 80% of the needy, who had previously lived in basements, huts or tents. Gaddafi played an important role in the implementation of the grandiose project of the Great Man-Made River, calling it the "Eighth Wonder of the World." In August 1984, he laid the foundation stone for the pipe factory in Brega and that was when work began on the project. This huge irrigation system made it possible to supply the desert regions and the coast of the country with water from the Nubian aquifer.

The reduction in the flow of petrodollars due to the fall in oil prices in the early 1980s caused some economic difficulties in Libya. Speaking at a mass rally on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the revolution on September 1, 1988, the Leader of the Revolution announced the widespread denationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises and even the abolition of organizations in charge of importing and exporting consumer goods.

After Muammar Gaddafi came to power, Libya repeatedly declared territorial claims to neighboring Chad on the Aouz strip, substantiating its claims by the fact that this zone is inhabited by a population ethnically close to Libyan Arabs and Berbers. At that time, a civil war was going on in Chad between the central government and the National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINA), which soon broke up into a number of groups that had the support of the United States, France and Libya. In August 1971, Chadian President Tombalbay announced that he had foiled a coup attempt involving newly liberated Chadians who allegedly received support from Muammar Gaddafi. He severed relations with Libya and invited opponents of Gaddafi to establish bases in Chad, and the Libyan leader in response recognized FROLIN and offered an operational base in Tripoli, increasing the amount of supplies to the Chadian rebels. In 1973, Libyan troops, without encountering resistance, captured a section of the border territory of Chad, and in 1975 Libya occupied and subsequently annexed the Aouzu strip with an area of ​​70 thousand km².

In October 1980, Libyan-minded President Goukouni Oueddei approached Libya for military assistance against the French-backed forces of Hissein Habré, who at the time also enjoyed Libyan backing. Since that time, Libya has taken an active part in the armed conflict. In January 1981, Libya and Chad announced their intention to unite. Oueddei and Gaddafi issued a joint communiqué stating that Chad and Libya had agreed to "work to realize full unity between the two countries." However, the unification of Libya and Chad did not take place. Thanks to the intervention of the OAU, on November 16 of the same year, Libyan troops left Chad. Upon their return home, Gaddafi announced that his troops had killed over 3,000 "enemies" while losing 300 of their own; by other estimates, Libyan losses were significantly higher.

Without Libyan support, Oueddei's forces were unable to stop the advance of Habré's troops, who occupied N'Djamena in June 1982 and overthrew his government. In the summer of 1983, the Libyan army again intervened in the conflict, but this time Oueddei led an insurgency against the Habré-led central government. The subsequent intervention of the French and Zairian troops actually led to the division of the country, and the entire territory north of the 16th parallel was under the control of the Libyan forces. In accordance with the mutual withdrawal agreement from Chad, France withdrew its troops in November 1984, but Libya did not. In 1987, Chadian troops, with the support of France, inflicted a number of defeats on the Libyan army in northern Chad, including in the Aouzu strip area, and also invaded Libyan territory, defeating the Maaten-es-Sarra air base. After a while, the parties signed an armistice agreement.

The question of the territorial belonging of the Aouzu strip was discussed at a meeting of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which ruled in favor of Chad in 1994, after which Libya withdrew its troops.

On April 5, 1986, a bomb exploded at the La Belle disco in West Berlin, popular with the US military, killing 3 people, including a Turkish girl, and injuring 200 others. The Libyan trace was seen in the organization of the terrorist attack. The reason for this was the intercepted messages of Gaddafi, in which the Libyan leader urged his supporters against the Americans to inflict maximum damage, regardless of which target is being attacked - civilian or military, and in one intercepted message, Libyan intelligence informed about the details of the explosion in West German disco. US President calls Gaddafi 'the mad dog of the Middle East' accusing him of aiding international terrorism. The US President ordered the bombing of the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. Five targets were planned for the strike by American aircraft, of which three were in the Tripoli region (Bab al-Azizia barracks, the Sidi Bilala training base for combat swimmers and the military sector of the Tripoli airport) and 2 in the Benghazi region (Al-Jamahariya-Barras barracks and the airfield "Benin"). On the night of April 15, US aircraft attacked the intended targets. During the bombing, several dozen people were killed, including Gaddafi's adopted daughter.

After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the archives of the state security service of the GDR - the Stasi, were in the hands of Western intelligence services, in which a transcript of the radio interception of negotiations between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in the GDR was found, during which an order was given to carry out an action "with as many victims as possible" .

When President Ronald Reagan died on June 6, 2004, Muammar Gaddafi said: "I deeply regret that Reagan died without ever being brought to justice for his horrific crime he committed in 1986 against Libyan children."

In 2001, a German court ruled that the responsibility for the Berlin bombing lay with the Libyan intelligence services. After the capture of Tripoli by rebel detachments in 2011, information appeared that documents and personal photographs were found in the captured residence of Bab al-Azizia, according to which Hannah Gaddafi did not die at all during the American bombing, but remained alive and even graduated from English language courses during British Council office in Tripoli.

On December 21, 1988, a passenger Boeing 747 was blown up in the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. American airline Pan Am, operating flight number 103 from London to New York, resulting in the death of 270 people (all passengers of the aircraft and crew members, as well as people who were in the disaster area). At first, terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as the Iranian authorities, were suspected of organizing the attack, but soon the Attorney General of Scotland, Lord Fraser, formally charged two members of the Libyan state intelligence services, Abdelbaset al-Mohammed al-Megrahi and al-Amin, with organizing the explosion. Khalifa Fhimahu.

On September 19, 1989, a DC-10 flying UTA-772 from Brazzaville to Paris was blown up in Niger airspace, killing 170 people. The investigation revealed the involvement of Libyan intelligence officers in this crime.

In 1992, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Libya. On December 1, 1993, additional UN sanctions were imposed prohibiting the sale of many types of equipment for transporting and refining oil, and Libyan holdings abroad were also frozen.

In March 1999, a French court sentenced six Libyans in absentia, including the husband of Gaddafi's wife's sister and deputy head of the secret service, Abdallah Senussi, to life imprisonment for a terrorist attack in Niger airspace, and in August, the French prosecutor recommended not to accuse Muammar Gaddafi of involvement in the explosion of the French aircraft. Libya paid 200 million francs ($31 million) to the relatives of the victims, but Gaddafi said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro that this does not mean that his country was involved in the explosion. In April of the same year, Libya extradited two Libyan intelligence officers suspected of committing a terrorist attack on Lockerbie. On May 7, 2002, the US administration included Libya in the "axis of evil".

On August 13, 2003, Libya admitted that its officials were responsible for the bombing of a plane in the skies over Lockerbie. Immediately after that, the question arose of lifting all sanctions from Libya and excluding it from the black list of "states sponsoring international terrorism." However, France threatened to use its right of veto in the UN Security Council on a resolution to lift sanctions if Libya does not increase the amount of compensation to relatives of the terrorist attack on Niger. On September 1, Colonel Gaddafi announced his decision to pay the victims of the tragedy, emphasizing that he does not consider his country responsible for the attack: “Our dignity is important to us. We don't care about money. The Lockerbie case is already over, and the UTA case is now closed. We are opening a new page in our relations with the West.”

On February 23, 2011, the former Secretary of the General People's Committee (Minister) of Justice of Libya, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, in an interview with the Swedish tabloid Expressen, stated that he "I have proof that Gadhafi personally ordered Lockerbie" ("I have proof that Gadhafi gave the order about Lockerbie").

As a protest against the Oslo agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, on September 1, 1995, Gaddafi announced the expulsion of 30,000 Palestinians working in his country. He also called on Arab governments to expel the Palestinians and send them back to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as punishment for the Israeli and Palestinian leaders for reaching an agreement. However, already at the beginning of the 21st century, Gaddafi began to come up with the idea of ​​creating a single state on the territory of Palestine as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In August 2003, he published a "White Book", in which he outlined his ideas for resolving the conflict, in particular, the creation of a united Arab-Jewish state "Izratina". He saw the return of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949 as a key prerequisite for peace.

In 1997, Gaddafi published the book Long Live the State of the Oppressed! In 1998, on his initiative, a Community of Coastal and Saharan States (CENSAD) with the aim of strengthening peace, security and stability, as well as achieving global economic and social development in the region. On March 2, 2001, also on his initiative, the African Union was proclaimed, uniting 54 African states. In addition, Gaddafi began to take the initiative to create the United States of Africa. This wording was first mentioned in 1924 in the poem “Hail, United States of Africa” by African-American rights activist Marcus Garvey, later this idea was followed by the President of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah. According to Gaddafi: “It is in the interests of Europe, America, China and Japan that there be such an entity as the United States of Africa. I once fought for national liberation with Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Algeria, Palestine. Now we can put down the gun and work for peace and progress. This is my role."

During the years of rule, many assassination attempts were made on Muammar Gaddafi. The most famous assassination attempts and plots against Colonel Gaddafi include:

In June 1975, during a military parade, an unsuccessful attempt was made to fire at the podium, which was Muammar Gaddafi.
In 1981, conspirators from the Libyan Air Force made an unsuccessful attempt to shoot down a plane on which Gaddafi was returning to Tripoli from the USSR.
In December 1981, Colonel Khalifa Kadir fired at Muammar Gaddafi, slightly wounding him in the shoulder.
In November 1985, a relative of Gaddafi, Colonel Hassan Ishkal, who intended to kill the Libyan leader in Sirte, was executed.
In 1989, during a visit by Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to Libya, Gaddafi was attacked by a fanatic armed with a sword. The attacker was shot dead by the guards.
In 1996, during the passage of Gaddafi's motorcade along the street of the city of Sirte, a car was blown up. The Libyan leader was not injured, but six people were killed in the assassination attempt. British MI5 agent David Shayler would later say that the British secret service MI6 was behind the assassination attempt.
In 1998, near the Libyan-Egyptian border, unknown people fired on the Libyan leader, but Aisha's main bodyguard covered Muammar Gaddafi with herself and died; seven more guards were injured. Gaddafi himself was slightly wounded in the elbow.

In the 2000s, unrest among the established Libyan elite, the loss of all allies and Gaddafi's unwillingness to go into open confrontation with the Western world led to some economic liberalization, and then political life countries. Foreign companies were allowed into Libya, contracts were signed on the construction of a gas pipeline to Italy (relations between the former colony and the mother country had previously been extremely strained). In general, Libya, albeit with a long delay, followed the path of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. Changes in the economic and political course, accompanied by competent propaganda, allowed Gaddafi to stay in power and avoid the fate of Anwar Sadat or Saddam Hussein.

In June 2003, at a nationwide congress, Muammar Gaddafi announced the country's new course towards "people's capitalism"; at the same time, the privatization of the oil and related industries was announced. On December 19, Libya announced the renunciation of all types of weapons of mass destruction.

On April 23, 2004, the United States announced a partial lifting of anti-Libyan economic sanctions. On July 14 of the same year, in Tripoli, Muammar Gaddafi received the title of chess grandmaster for his help in organizing the 17th World Chess Championship, which was held in Africa for the first time in FIDE history.

Libya entered the Guinness Book of Records as the country with the lowest annual inflation rate(in 2001-2005 - 3.1%).

According to INAPRO data for 2008, in terms of the share of GDP (88.86 billion dollars) per capita, Libya ranks first among the five Arab countries of North Africa - 14.4 thousand dollars.

In August 2008, at a meeting of more than 200 African kings, sultans, emirs, sheikhs and tribal leaders, Muammar Gaddafi was declared the "king of kings of Africa." February 2 next year, Muammar Gaddafi was elected chairman of the African Union. As of 2009, the level of education of the population was 86.8% (before the overthrow of the monarchy, in 1968, 73% of the population was illiterate). In his foreign policy the Libyan leader continued to be an adherent of pan-Arabism.

In September 2009, Muammar Gaddafi arrived in the United States for the 64th session of the UN General Assembly. Instead of the prescribed 15 minutes, Gaddafi's speech on the podium of the General Assembly lasted an hour and a half. The interpreter, doing his job for 75 minutes, at one moment could not stand it and shouted into the microphone in Arabic: “I can’t take it anymore”, after which he was replaced by the head of the UN Arab office. Taking to the podium, Gaddafi said: "Even my son Obama said it was a historic meeting". In his speech The Libyan leader has sharply criticized the UN Security Council, calling it "a council on terrorism". Holding the UN charter in his hands, Gaddafi said that, according to this document, military force is used only by decision of the UN with the consent of all member countries of the organization, specifying that during the existence of the UN "large countries have waged 64 wars against small ones" and "the UN has nothing did nothing to prevent these wars." He proposed moving the UN headquarters from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern - "for example, to Libya."

Muammar Gaddafi defended the right of the Taliban to create an Islamic emirate and even touched on the Somali pirates: "Somali pirates are not pirates. India, Japan, Australia, you are pirates. You fish in the territorial waters of Somalia. And Somalia protects its supplies, food for its children ... I saw these pirates, I talked to them".

The leader of the Libyan revolution announced that US President and British Prime Minister Tony Blair personally participated in the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, demanded an investigation into the assassination of John F. proposed to be made president for life. At the end of his speech, Gaddafi said: “You are already tired. You are all asleep” and left the podium with the words “You gave birth to Hitler, not us. You persecuted the Jews. And you staged a holocaust!

In the winter of 2010-2011, a wave of demonstrations and protests began in the Arab world, caused by various reasons, but directed mainly against the ruling authorities. On the evening of February 15, relatives of prisoners killed under unclear circumstances in the Abu Slim prison in Tripoli in 1996 gathered in Benghazi and demanded the release of lawyer and human rights activist Fethi Tarbel. Despite the release of Tarbel, the demonstrators clashed with the security forces.

In the following days, anti-government protests were actively suppressed by forces loyal to the Libyan leader, with the support of foreign mercenaries. On February 18, the demonstrators took full control of the city of Al Bayda, with the local police defecting to the side of the protesters. By February 20, Benghazi passed under the control of opponents of the Libyan leadership, after which the unrest spread to the capital. For several days of unrest, the eastern part of the country was under the control of the protesters, while in the western part Gaddafi retained power. The main demand of the opposition was the resignation of Colonel Gaddafi.

On February 26, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions prohibiting the supply of weapons and any military materials to Libya, as well as a ban on Gaddafi's international travel and freezing of his overseas assets. The next day in Benghazi, at a joint emergency meeting of members of local people's councils, the rebels formed the Transitional National Council as the authority of the revolution, which was headed by the country's former justice minister, Mustafa Muhammad Abd al-Jalil. On the same day, in the west of Libya, the city of Az-Zawiya, an important center of the oil refining industry, passed under the control of opponents of Gaddafi. Meanwhile, in eastern Libya, armed rebel groups launched an offensive against Tripoli, capturing Libyan cities along the way. On March 2, one of the centers of the oil industry in the country of Marsa Brega came under their control, and two days later the port of Ras Lanuf. On March 5, the rebels entered Bin Javad, the last city on the way to Sirte, but the very next day they were forced to retreat from the city. By mid-March, government troops launched an offensive against the positions of the rebels and within a few days returned the cities of Ras Lanuf and Marsa el-Breg to their control. On March 10, in the west of Libya, Ez-Zawiya was recaptured by government forces.

On the night of March 17-18, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, which provides for a ban on flights by Libyan aviation, as well as the adoption of any measures to protect the Libyan population, with the exception of a ground operation. On the evening of March 19, the armed forces of France and the United States launched Operation Dawn of the Odyssey to defeat military targets in Libya on the basis of a UN Security Council resolution "in order to protect civilians." A number of European and Arab countries joined the operation.

In his speech to the Libyan people, Gaddafi said to the countries of the international coalition: “You are not ready for war, but we are. We are happy that this moment has come" and that "You are the aggressors, you are animals. All tyrants will sooner or later fall under the pressure of the people. In his speech, he also announced that the fate of Hitler and Mussolini awaits them. As a result of coalition air raids and rocket and bomb attacks on the positions of government troops, Gaddafi's supporters had to retreat from their positions. With the support of the aviation of the countries of the international coalition, the rebels managed to regain control over Ajdabiya, Marsa el Brega and Ras Lanuf within a few days, advancing towards Sirte. However, government troops not only stopped the advance of the rebels near Sirte, but also launched a massive offensive, pushing the rebels 160 kilometers to the east of the country by March 30.

On June 24, Amnesty International conducted a series of investigations into the activities of supporters of Muammar Gadaffi. According to them, they found evidence that the rebels falsified many data on the crimes of forces loyal to Gaddafi. However, on June 27, the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi for organizing the killings, detentions and imprisonments committed in the first 12 days of the Libyan uprising.

After the fall of Tripoli, only the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte remained under the control of Gaddafi, around which fierce battles unfolded. Repeated attempts by NPS detachments to capture Sirte ended in failure. As the head of the internal security service, General Mansour Dao, later said, Muammar Gaddafi left the capital and moved to Sirte about 12 days before the capture of Tripoli: “He was upset, he was angry, sometimes it seemed to us that he was going crazy. Most of the time he was just sad and angry. He was convinced that the Libyan people still loved him, even after we told him that the capital had fallen."

According to Dao, “Gaddafi was nervous. He could not call anywhere or otherwise communicate with the outside world. We had very little water and food. Medications were also difficult." However, at times, Gaddafi made audio messages through the al-Urabiya channel, calling on the people to resist. Speaking about the life of a colonel in the besieged Sirte, the former head of the internal security service noted that “Gaddafi spent time reading, taking notes or making tea for himself. He did not lead the resistance, his sons did it. Gaddafi himself did not plan anything. And he didn't have any plans. According to him, the Libyan leader “walked up and down the small room, making notes in a notebook. We knew this was the end. Gaddafi said: "I am wanted by the International Criminal Court. No country will accept me. I prefer to die at the hands of the Libyans"».

On the morning of October 20, 2011, the National Transitional Council detachments launched another assault on Sirte, as a result of which they managed to take the city. When trying to escape from the besieged city, Muammar Gaddafi was captured by the rebels. NATO released a communiqué with a report that at about 08:30 (0630 GMT), its aircraft attacked eleven military vehicles of Gaddafi's army, which formed part of a large convoy of about 75 vehicles, which was moving rapidly along the road in the suburbs of Sirte. After an air strike knocked out one of them, “a group of two dozen Gaddafi regime vehicles headed south at high speed, still posing a serious danger. NATO aircraft destroyed or damaged about a dozen of them.”

The rebels managed to capture the wounded Gaddafi, after which he was immediately surrounded by a crowd that began to mock him. People shouting "Allah Akbar!" They began firing into the air and pointing at the Colonel with machine guns. Gaddafi, his face covered in blood, was taken to the car, where he was put on the hood. Later video recordings of the last minutes of Gaddafi's life refuted the original official version of the National Transitional Council of Libya. It became clear that he was killed as a result of lynching by the rebels who captured him. In the last moments of his life, Muammar Gaddafi called on the rebels to change their minds: “Haram alaikum… Haram alaikum… Shame on you! Do you know no sin?!".

In addition to Gaddafi, his son Mutazzim was also captured, but then, under unclear circumstances, he was killed. One of the participants in the 1969 coup and members of the SRK, the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Brigadier General Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, was also killed.

The bodies of Muammar Gaddafi, his son and Abu Bakr Younis Jaber were put on public display in an industrial vegetable refrigerator in a shopping mall in Misurata. At dawn on October 25, all three were secretly buried in the Libyan desert. This ended the 42-year rule of Colonel Gaddafi and the revolution that he proclaimed after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1969.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry demanded a thorough investigation into the circumstances of Gaddafi's death.

Lockerbie materials and MH-17 lies

Government espionage for government lies - what the Lockerbie material reveals about MH17 lies

This month marks 30 years since the bombing of Pan American Flight PA 103 (pictured above left) en route from London to New York. The false story of the British and American governments, concocted to blame Libya and justify the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, required falsification of evidence and conviction in a rigged trial against the wrong person. It also required spying on the relatives of those who died in order to frustrate their efforts to get to the bottom of the truth.
The scale of this operation was revealed last week in the partial release of British government documents from the National Archives of the United Kingdom. Among the spying operations uncovered were phone tapping, computer hacking, and e-mail browsing.

The disclosed archival information also shows that the same methods have been used since 2014 to fabricate responsibility for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 (pictured above right) over Ukraine and to justify global sanctions against Russia, plus operations to overthrow President Vladimir Putin.
But thirty years of state secrets to justify state lies are not enough to bring to justice those responsible for these lies, or to make the truth stronger than them.
RA Flight 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. He took off from London and had been flying at cruising altitude for New York for an hour when a bomb exploded in the cargo compartment. All 259 passengers on board the aircraft were killed, as well as 11 people on the ground.

Front pages of Murdoch's newspapers: left - February 24, 2011; right - October 20, 2011
On the left, a large headline: "Gaddafi ordered the bombing of a plane over Lockerbie", on the right: "Gaddafi was killed by a bullet in the head. This is for Lockerbie. And for Yvonne Fletcher. And for the victims of the Irish Republican Army"
The 30-year ruling to withhold government documents in this case is now expiring at the National Archives. An advance report in Murdoch's paper last week claimed they "saw" the documents, but the paper does not publish them directly or in full. The report about the documents appeared in the Scottish section of Friday's edition of The Times. The same message is in the Scottish Sun.

The report said that officials from the government of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed on special, covert measures to "closely monitor" the relatives of the dead passengers because of their attempts to investigate the facts of what happened. The newspaper report does not name the Foreign Office officials whose correspondence with the Scottish Lord Advocate (Scottish Attorney General) and Thatcher was reviewed. It also does not provide details of the surveillance and hacking operations, and does not reveal the role played by the mainstream media and their journalists in the official deception.

This newspaper report appears to confirm that much of the British government's documents in the Lockerbie case continue to be withheld; the most important of them may have been destroyed to prevent their being made public, according to representatives of the victims. Murdoch's media, which spearheaded the open fabrication, continues to persist.

(In the United States, the lead prosecutor in the Libyan Liability Case was Robert Mueller, who is now the Special Prosecutor to prosecute alleged Russian interference in American politics. Three years after the Lockerbie attack, Mueller served as Acting Deputy Attorney General in charge of arraignment in November 1991 to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan later convicted of this attack.)

The British Foreign Office told reporters last week: "We will not comment on the contents of our archival documents."

Additional reports in Scotland and Channel Four in London quoted Aamer Anwar, al-Megrahi's lawyer, as saying: "No wonder the intelligence agencies have been ordered to keep tabs on those British relatives who still haven't given up on their search for the truth"... Anwar said , which is shocking that the British state refused to make the documents public, while simultaneously destroying some of them during the trial: “My clients consider this an attempt to obstruct the course of justice ... I wrote to the Lord Advocate asking for full disclosure of all relevant facts, discovered by the police."

In the case of MH17, British courts refused to open government documents or allow lawyers for first-degree relatives to determine the cause of death of ten British citizens who died on board this aircraft. The decision to ban hearings in the coroner's court in Britain was taken by the Home Secretary in July 2015 - current Prime Minister Theresa May. Read more about how it was done here. The Australian government has gone even further by withholding secret intelligence and intelligence memos exchanged between the Attorney General and the Prime Minister, which concluded that the position of Russian guilt was untenable.

Similar operations to plant fabricated evidence in Murdoch's publications and other mainstream media, withhold counter-evidence, as well as surveillance operations, computer hacking and discrediting alternative sources, continue by the Dutch and Australian intelligence agencies. But there is one difference. The organizations of relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie attack - mostly British and American - have proven to be better organized and more resilient over the years, and much more negative about the state's version of what happened.

The downing of flight MH17 resulted in the death of 298 passengers and crew. Not a single relative publicly challenged the story of Russia's responsibility.

Dutch sources say they believe the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the security services have teamed up to keep the families of the MH17 victims under constant surveillance. The families were advised to instruct lawyers to push charges against Russian targets in local, European and US courts. They are being held back from talking to journalists who are known to be critical of the official story about what caused the plane to crash.

Australian and possibly US intelligence agents were seen during a hearing at the Coroner's Court in Melbourne, Australia in December 2015. This was the first of only two coroner's court proceedings to have taken place in the world; another trial took place in Sydney in May 2016. Australian law requires coroners to investigate the deaths of 28 Australian citizens or permanently resident foreigners on board flight MH17.

The front pages of Murdoch's newspapers: on the left, the London Sun, July 18, 2014; right - Melbourne "Herald Sun" dated October 14, 2015.
Headlines from left to right: "Flight MH17 shot down in the sky. Putin's rocket"; "Russian missile downed MH17. Putin's rebels did it"
At the hearing in Melbourne, I was in court and watched as a group of government agents, men and women, worked to shield the families of the victims from the appeals and questions of journalists. At the back of the courtroom, journalists sat in one row; families sat in the main rows in the procedural area. I was sitting directly behind one of the families. As soon as I started asking questions to a family member, a woman in her 30s tried to stop me by saying that I was speaking too loudly; however, the coroner was not present at the meeting and the trial itself did not take place at that moment. The agent then whispered something to the other family members and the conversation with me ended.

I reported at the time: "In addition to the coroner's staff, there was one government intelligence agent in court who hid his official identification mark under his jacket and refused to say whether he was an Australian or American citizen. This officer, who was in his thirties, was conspicuous during a break in the trial in the hallway of the court. He looked like an American."

Also: "The court heard that the surviving relatives of the crash victims were regularly outreached and mentored by Australian government officials. They were also instructed not to answer questions from the press, although one admitted that his family was allowed to meet with lawyers. These statements were made as evidence at the coroner's inquest by representatives of the victims.One representing members of the Van Den Hende family - Shaliza Duvall, her husband Hans Van Den Hende and their three children - Pierce, 15, Marnix, 12, and daughter Margot, 8, said, that press reports of the crash were dubious and unconvincing: "We're not sure who or what to believe."

This remark was never repeated again.

PS. And also on the subject of British intelligence operations. Hackers from "Anonymous" recently dumped the 4th package of documents on the AI ​​operation, which contains documents on discrediting Jeremy Corbyn, Russia Today, the Skripal case, operations in Nigeria, Hungary and Armenia. The Skripal case as part of Operation AI was called "Operation Iris". Data are given on payment for custom articles in the Skripal case and various activities that were carried out in the framework of this case to discredit the Russian Federation.

N.B. And these same pieces of g ... for later they call Russians "uncivilized", and offer to "step back and shut up" ... mdaaaa ...

Slave market. Tripoli. Modern Libya, without the nightmarish dictator Gaddafi. Do you feel the scope of European democracy? December 2018
That feeling when the bearers of democracy killed the "dictator", and civilization came to the country...