When is gaddafi born

That saw him complete a transition from international outcast to accepted, if unpredictable, leader. He's a political survivor of the first order. Muammar Gaddafi was born in the desert near Sirte in In his youth he was an admirer of Egyptian leader and Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser, taking part in anti-Israel protests during the Suez crisis in He first hatched plans to topple the monarchy at military college, and received further army training in Britain before returning to the Libyan city of Benghazi and launching his coup there on 1 September He laid out his political philosophy in the s in his Green Book, which charted a home-grown alternative to both socialism and capitalism, combined with aspects of Islam.

In he invented a system called the "Jamahiriya" or "state of the masses", in which power is meant to be held by thousands of "peoples' committees". The Libyan leader's singular approach is not limited to political philosophy. On foreign trips he has set up camp in a luxury Bedouin tent and been accompanied by armed female bodyguards - said to be considered less easily distracted than their male counterparts.

A tent is also used to receive visitors in Libya, where Col Gaddafi sits through meetings or interviews swishing the air with a horsehair or palm leaf fly-swatter.

Benjamin Barber, an independent political analyst from the US who has met Col Gaddafi several times recently to discuss Libya's future, says the Libyan leader "sees himself very much as an intellectual".

Col Gaddafi has long tried to exert his influence over the region and beyond. Early on he sent his army into Chad, where it occupied the Aozou Strip in the north of the country in In the s, he hosted training camps for rebel groups from across West Africa, including Tuaregs, who are part of the Berber community.

More recently he has led efforts to mediate with Tuareg rebels in Niger and Mali. There are many explanations for the change of Gaddafi's politics. The most obvious is that the once very rich Libya became much less wealthy as oil prices dropped significantly during the 's. Since then, Gaddafi has tended to need other countries more than before and hasn't been able to dole out foreign aid as he once did.

In this environment, the increasingly stringent sanctions placed by the UN and US on Libya made it more and more isolated politically and economically. Another possibility is that strong Western reactions have forced Gaddafi into changing his politics.

It is also possible that realpolitik changed Gaddafi. His ideals and aims did not materialize: there never was any Arab unity, the various armed revolutionary organizations he supported did not achieve their goals, and the demise of the Soviet Union left Gaddafi's main symbolic target, the United States, stronger than ever.

Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U. President George W. Bush and other supporters of the Iraq War portrayed Gaddafi's announcement as a direct consequence of the Iraq War by stating that Gaddafi acted out of fear for the future of his own regime if he continued to keep and conceal his weapons. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a supporter of the Iraq War, was quoted as saying that Gaddafi had privately phoned him, admitting as much.

Many foreign policy experts, however, contend that Gaddafi's announcement was merely a continuation of his prior attempts at normalizing relations with the West and getting the sanctions removed.

To support this, they point to the fact that Libya had already made similar offers starting four years prior to it finally being accepted. International inspectors turned up several tons of chemical weaponry in Libya, as well as an active nuclear weapons program.

As the process of destroying these weapons continued, Libya improved its cooperation with international monitoring regimes to the extent that, by March , France was able to conclude an agreement with Libya to develop a significant nuclear power program. In March , British prime minister Tony Blair became one of the first western leaders in decades to visit Libya and publicly meet Gaddafi.

Blair praised Gaddafi's recent acts, and stated that he hoped Libya could now be a strong ally in the international war on terrorism. In the run-up to Blair's visit, the British ambassador in Tripoli, Anthony Layden, explained Libya's and Gaddafi's political change thus:. I think this dilemma goes to the heart of Colonel Gaddafi's decision that he needed a radical change of direction.

On May 15, , the U. State Department announced that it would restore full diplomatic relations with Libya, once Gaddafi declared he was abandoning Libya's weapons of mass destruction program. The State Department also said that Libya would be removed from the list of nations supporting terrorism.

In October , there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Gaddafi by elements of the Libyan army. In July , bloody riots followed a football match as a protest against Gaddafi. Fathi Eljahmi is a prominent dissident who has been imprisoned since for calling for increased democratization in Libya. A website that actively sought his overthrow was set up in and listed victims of murder and political assassination. In February , following revolutions in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, protests against Gaddafi's rule began anew and in earnest.

These escalated into an uprising that spread across the country, with the forces opposing Gaddafi establishing a government based in Benghazi.

This led to the Libyan Civil War, which included a military intervention by a NATO-led coalition to enforce a Security Council resolution calling for a no-fly zone and protection of civilians in Libya. Gaddafi and his forces lost the Battle of Tripoli in August, and on September 16, the newly formed government took Libya's seat at the UN, replacing Gaddafi. He retained control over parts of Libya, most notably the city of Sirte, to which it was presumed that he had fled.

Although Gaddafi's forces initially held out against the NTC's advances, Gaddafi was captured alive as Sirte fell to the rebel forces on October 20, and he died the same day under unclear circumstances.

Gaddafi has eight children, seven of them sons. His eldest son, Muhammad Gaddafi, is by a wife now in disfavor, but runs the Libyan Olympic Committee and owns all the telecommunication companies in Libya. The next eldest Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, was born in , is a painter, runs a charity which has been involved in negotiating freedom for hostages taken by Islamic militants, especially in the Philippines.

In , after sharply criticizing his father's regime, Saif Al Islam briefly left Libya, reportedly to take on a position in banking outside of the country. He returned to Libya soon after, launching an environment friendly initiative to teach children how they can help clean up parts of Libya. He has also been on the forefront of resolving the HIV case of a Palestinian doctor and Bulgarian nurses described previously.

The third eldest, Al-Saadi Gaddafi, is married to the daughter of a military commander. Sampdoria, made billions of dollars in the petrol industry and produces films.

He fled to Egypt after allegedly masterminding an Egyptian backed coup attempt against his father. Gaddafi forgave Mutasim-Billah and he returned to Libya where he now holds the post of national security adviser and heads his own unit within the army. Saif Al Islam and Mutasim-Billah are both seen as possible successors to their father.

The fifth eldest, Hannibal once worked for a public marine transportation company in Libya. He is most notable for being involved in a series of violent incidents throughout Europe, including charges against him for beating up his then pregnant girlfriend, Alin Skaf. In September , Hannibal was involved in a police chase in Paris. Gaddafi's only daughter is Ayesha Gaddafi, a lawyer who had joined the defense team of executed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. She married a cousin of her father in In January , Gaddafi purchased a 7.

Though Gaddafi is an avid football fan, this more importantly continued a longstanding association with the late Gianni Agnelli, the primary investor in Fiat. By Friday, the day after he died, the body of the former dictator once so feared by his Libyan opponents was facing a final indignity — being stored on the floor of a room-sized freezer in Misrata usually used by restaurants and shops to keep perishable goods.

If there is an irony surrounding the death of Muammar Gaddafi, it is, perhaps, that he should have met his end in Sirte, a city more than any other associated with his rule. It was Sirte that Gaddafi turned into his second capital — a former fishing village that he transformed into a place dedicated to both his own ego and his Third Revolutionary Theory, which he embodied in his Green Book that was taught in all Libyan schools.

And as the city fell, bit by bit over the weeks, its nature was revealed. There are pictures in the wealthier houses of Gaddafi with their occupants and stylised beaten copper images of Gaddafi on the walls. In one building, discovered by paramedics with the government forces, there is a trove of snapshots of Gaddafi and his sons. No wonder, perhaps, that this is where he chose to make his last stand.

The conflict around the city — during the long siege that began in September — reveals another nature of Sirte that must have made it attractive to Gaddafi. There are concrete walls within walls, compounds within those barriers, easy for Gaddafi and his protectors to defend.

For those attacking Sirte they seemed for a while to be insuperable obstacles, not least the long barrier blocking access to the vast plaza of the Ouagoudougou conference centre. There were small counter-attacks as the government forces crept forward, sometimes with rocket-propelled grenades that burst in the air or crashed into buildings. At other times machine-gun fire rattled into the bullet-pocked facades of offices, banks, schools or villas. They probed for weak positions. There were rumours of cars attempting to break out as the net closed.

And with each day fighters posed the same question to which they could not supply an answer: why was it that those fighting on the Gaddafi side would not give up? How Gaddafi came to be in Sirte — if not the reason that he went to one of the few locations still strongly supportive of him — remains murky. It is believed he fled from Tripoli shortly before it fell in August.

Motorcades carrying his wife and daughter to Algeria, and at least one other son to Niger, were spotted and the details leaked to the media by Nato.

But the convoy carrying the dictator appears to have been missed. For his escape, Gaddafi had only one highway to travel — leading south of the capital to Beni Walid, 90 miles from Tripoli, the only highway not in rebel hands. A further detour would then have been necessary to avoid the rebels who were pushing in all directions out of the coastal city of Misrata, involving the convoy driving south-east, deeper into the Libyan desert, to the only traffic junction leading to Sirte at Waddan.

The rebels were deeply divided over where Gaddafi was. Some believed he had fled on one of the convoys carrying his wife and other sons that were spotted crossing south to Niger and east to Algeria.