Muammar Gaddafi's Life, "King Of Kings' To Dead Dictator

He was one of the leaders of the world's most ruthless of the state. He was also one of the most extravagant. Rarely, the leader of this small nation has played an important role in the international arena.

Muammar Gaddafi, who had resisted the attacks, U.S. air strikes and years of international sanctions, has died in the desert city of Sirte where he was born, said a coalition of rebels.

Before there was Osama bin Laden, was Muammar Gaddafi. For years he was public enemy No. 1 in the United States, feared and hated for financing terrorism and revolution throughout the world.

A Newsweek cover story in 1981 called him "the most dangerous man in the world." For President Ronald Reagan, he was "mad dog of the Middle East."

And that was before the act of the most atrocious of all of his regime: the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libyan agents planted explosives in a suitcase. The crash killed 270 people, mostly Americans.

"Mad Dog" Gaddafi is dead

And then, Gaddafi has promised an astonishing reversal. It 'was one of the first Arab leaders denounced the September 11 terrorist attacks. Two years later, Libya renounced weapons programs of mass destruction, has responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and agreed to pay $ 2.7 billion restoration of the families of Lockerbie victims.

The converse of the United States, the resumption of diplomatic relations with Tripoli and lift economic sanctions. But while Gadhafi has changed the political behavior, his eccentric behavior is not. Throughout his four decades in power, he violated all the rules to a head of state must act.

He surrounded himself with bodyguards armed to the teeth the feminine weapon, and for years, traveled with a voluptuous Ukrainian nurse. He brought along a Bedouin tent to sleep when he went abroad, and once participated in a summit in Belgrade with six camels and two horses in tow. Gaddafi wore flowing dresses, sunglasses favored and received large injections of Botox.

"I can make a very direct question, which may seem rude?" Barbara Walters ABC News asked in an interview with Gaddafi in Tripoli in 1989. "In our country, we read that you are unstable, read that you're crazy. Why do you think it is? ... Are you mad?"

"Sure, it bothers me," Gaddafi said. "I do not think that the vast majority of people in the four corners of the world, I love me."

Libya was one of the poorest nations of the world, when Gaddafi was born in a Bedouin tent in 1942 to illiterate parents. Young Muammar showed promise, and thus he became the first member of his family to attend college.

We carry out the objectives measure, even as a teenager. Passionate General Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power in neighboring Egypt, Gaddafi began conspiring with fellow high school at the same revolution in Libya.

In September 1969, Gaddafi lead a small group of junior officers in a coup without bloodshed Libya to overthrow pro-Western monarch, King Idris. It was a bold move, since Gaddafi was just an army lieutenant, barely 27 years.

Initially, Gaddafi has supported large. He took no formal title, calling himself the Supreme Head or solidarity. He created a system of government called the "Jamahiriya" or the state of the masses, who called on Libya to be governed by local councils. But there would be no collective rule.

Flamboyant Muammar Gaddafi dictatorship is complete

He turned Libya into a dictatorship, the criminalization of disagreement, to create a network of informers and opposition conduct. He sent hit squads to hunt down dissidents - "dogs," he called them - who fled to Europe and the United States

More importantly, Gaddafi urged foreign oil companies to give his regime nearly 80 percent of revenues from fields in the Libyan oil, a model that could be copied by other oil-producing states. He gave Qaddafi with resources to create chaos in the world. Host a deep resentment of the West, Qaddafi supported revolutionary movements in Africa, Asia and Europe - the IRA in Northern Ireland to radical Islamists in the Philippines. He supported Palestinian terrorism, including the Black September movement blamed for the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Gaddafi's behavior was on a collision course with the U.S.. Shortly after taking office, President Reagan broke diplomatic relations with Libya and struck an oil embargo. Gaddafi raised the stakes when the Libyan authorities organized the bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin in 1986, killing two American soldiers. U.S. Aircraft Gaddafi compound bombed in retaliation, killing about dictatorship.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 feet cemented Libya as a rogue state. Further sanctions against him were so serious that needed Barbara Walters, the State Department permission to visit Libya to interview Gaddafi.

The question was asked that the requirement for an interview in Washington that he needed to "abandon international terrorism," Gaddafi laughed. "This could be the answer when someone is sponsoring terrorism, but when our official position is that we are opposed to terrorism, as the application does not make sense," he said.

Gaddafi derided when Walters waved a report accusing him of using surrogates to commit terrorist acts around the world. "What are the practical tests, practical tests?" he said. "These are all lies ... just paper and ink."

All this made a U-Gaddafi after 9 / 11, has managed to fight terrorism, even more surprising. It is said that he shared with his secret files on Al Qaeda with the CIA and the U.S. to allow Libya to use the site tough interrogations of suspected terrorists.

With the sanctions, U.S. and international companies rushed to conduct business in Libya. World leaders, such as Italy, Silvio Berlusconi visited. Gaddafi and his country was no longer pariahs.

Now restored, Gaddafi was launched as a statesman, and in early 2009, was chosen to head the African Union, a confederation of 53 nations.

But the makeover unraveled in August 2009 after Scotland freed the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, a former Libyan agent Abdel Basset of named Ali al-Megrahi. Although the release was described as a humanitarian gesture - Megrahi was suffering from prostate cancer - has sparked outrage in the U.S. and Great Britain. The uproar exploded when Megrahi returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli organized by the Gaddafi regime. Again, Colonel Qaddafi seemed to her old tricks.

The ability of Gaddafi's anger was on full display during a subsequent visit by the UN General Assembly in New York.

Gaddafi "King of Kings" No More

Presented as "leader of the revolution, President of the African Union, the king of kings of Africa", Gaddafi lanes and lasted for 90 minutes instead of 15 planned. He pulled a copy of the UN Charter, demanded investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and compared the Security Council Al Qaeda.

But it was the Arab spring that led to the fall of Gaddafi. In February 2011, the spread anti-government protests in the Arab world moving to Libya with a day of wrath challenge his rule. More than 40 years of anger and resentment exploded in demonstrations across the country.

When the protests turned into a revolt, Gaddafi said excessive use of force. While Gaddafi troops have closed in Benghazi fortifications of the rebels, the UN Security Council has authorized the use of force to protect civilians. And on March 19, the U.S. and European intervention forces to launch missiles and bombs to help the rebels.

The tide has turned. In August, Tripoli, Gaddafi fled when rebel forces closed in. After 42 years, his reign was over. But the leader of the place Wily has been a mystery for months that the remains of its security forces have pushed the rebels were close to their strengths.

At the time of his death, Gaddafi, his son, Seif al-Islam and his intelligence chief was wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity, killing, wounding and detention of civilians during the early stages of the Libyan uprising.