Muammar Gaddafi. I am a Bedouin warrior who brought glory to Libya and will die a martyr.
Muammar abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (7 June 1942 – 20 October 2011) was the leader of Libya from 1969, when he overthrew the monarchy in a bloodless coup, until 2011 when he was overthrown by a NATO-backed internal rebellion. He declared Libya a directly democratic state (jamahiriya) in 1977, and stepped down from government office two years later, although he remained the effective center of power. Gaddafi pursued an anti-colonial and pan-African foreign policy that the United States and European countries condemned as sponsorship of terrorism. Dictators and tyrants: absolute rulers and would-be rulers in world history - Alan Axelrod, Charles Phillips. Muammar Gaddafi. Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (/ˈmoʊ.əmɑr ɡəˈdɑːfi/; Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي audio ) (c. 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi,[nb 2] was a Libyan revolutionary and politician, and the de facto ruler of Libya for 42 years.
Taking power in a 1969 coup d'etat, he ruled as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the "Brother Leader" of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011, when he was ousted in the Libyan civil war. After beginning as an Arab nationalist and Arab socialist, he later governed the country according to his own ideology, the Third International Theory. He eventually embraced Pan-Africanism, and served as Chairperson of the African Union from 2009 to 2010.