Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi (Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi) (June 1942 – 20 October 2011), was Libya's head of state from 1969, when he seized power in a bloodless military coup, until 1977, when he stepped down from his official executive role as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of Libya, and claimed subsequently to be merely a symbolic figurehead. Critics have often described him as Libya's de facto autocrat, a claim his Libyan regime officially denied. In 2011, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya regime he established was overthrown in a civil war which...
