[192] In other instances, Gaddafi pushed through laws without the GPC's support, such as when he desired to allow women into the armed forces. [33] One of Gaddafi's Egyptian teachers, Mahmoud Efay, was reportedly sympathetic towards the youth's political ideas, and advised him that a successful revolution would need the support of the army. [47] Despite later rumours to the contrary, he did not attend the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. In 1980, they proposed a political union, with Libya promising to pay off Syria's £1-billion debt to the Soviet Union; although pressures led Assad to pull out, they remained allies. British Petroleum rejected as inadequate a Libyan offer of compensation, and the British treasury banned Libya from participation in the sterling area. [97] Gaddafi's regime opened up a wide range of educational and employment opportunities for women, although these primarily benefited a minority in the urban middle-classes. There is some proof that the Egyptian government was considering a war against Libya as early as 1974. [296] In June 2005, Libya joined the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). [223] Although nearby nations like Syria and Israel also employed hit squads, Gaddafi was unusual in publicly bragging about his administration's use of them;[224] in 1980, he ordered all dissidents to return home or be "liquidated wherever you are". [402][403] This would have led the Jewish population to become a minority within the new state. [71], The coup completed, the RCC proceeded with their intentions of consolidating the revolutionary government and modernizing the country. [117] Nasser was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, who suggested that rather than creating a unified state, the Arab states should create a political federation, implemented in April 1971; in doing so, Egypt, Syria, and Sudan received large grants of Libyan oil money. Dissent was illegal under Law 75 of 1973. [259] In Operation El Dorado Canyon, orchestrated on 15 April 1986, US military planes launched a series of air-strikes on Libya, bombing military installations in various parts of the country, killing around 100 Libyans, including several civilians. [349], In the conflict's early months it appeared that Gaddafi's government—with its greater fire-power—would be victorious. Diplomatic recognition of the new government came quickly from countries throughout the world. Noting that Gaddafi's favourite hobbies were reading and playing football, he thought him an "amusing officer, always cheerful, hard-working, and conscientious". [16] Trade unions were incorporated into the ASU and strikes outlawed. [59], Gaddafi was a close supporter of Ugandan President Idi Amin. The centerpiece of the new system was the General People's Congress (GPC), a national representative body intended to replace the RCC. The BPCs were in theory the repository of ultimate political authority and decision making, embodying what Gaddafi termed direct "people's power". [355] This Western military intervention was criticized by various leftist governments, including those that had criticized Gaddafi's response to the protests, because they regarded it as an imperialist attempt to secure control of Libya's resources. [86] In 1970, other OPEC states followed suit, leading to a global increase in the price of crude oil. [63][69], Some publications were financed by Gaddafi. [157] During the years that followed, Gaddafists adopted quotes from The Green Book, such as "Representation is Fraud", as slogans. And this history of US intervention in Libya pre-dates the Gaddafi era - by 130 years, under President Thomas Jefferson, who sent Lt. Stephen Decatur to attack the base of the Barbary Pirates, later referenced in the opening line of the Marine Hymn: "to the shores of Tripoli." [332] Agriculture remained largely untouched by the reforms, with farms remaining cooperatives, the Agricultural Bank of Libya remaining wholly state-owned and state interventionist policies and price controls remaining. [478], The Libyan anti-Gaddafist movement brought together a diverse array of groups, which had varied motives and objectives. [209] Membership of the Revolutionary Committees was drawn from within the BPCs. [497] During the Civil War, various leftist groups endorsed the anti-Gaddafist rebels—but not the Western military intervention—by arguing that Gaddafi had become an ally of Western imperialism by cooperating with the War on Terror and efforts to block African migration to Europe. [365][366] The convoy scattered, and Gaddafi and those closest to him fled to a nearby villa, which was shelled by rebel militia from Misrata. Under President Gaddafi, Libya built friendly relations based on solidarity with other African States and was always ready to help if a ‘brother nation’ was in trouble. Gaddafi's plan was intercepted by Western intelligence. Gaddafi renounced all government functions on 2 March 1979. The ambiguity may have helped serve Gaddafi's aim to remain the prime mover behind Libyan governance, while minimizing his visibility at a time when internal opposition to political repression was rising. Such reports were ignored, and Gaddafi quickly progressed through the course. [448] One of those Cojean interviewed, a woman named Soraya, claimed that Gaddafi kept her imprisoned in a basement for six years, where he repeatedly raped her, urinated on her, and forced her to watch pornography, drink alcohol, and snort cocaine. [205], Libya began to turn towards socialism. On 5 April 1986, Libyan agents bombed "La Belle" nightclub in West Berlin, killing three and injuring 229. Public education in the country became free and primary education compulsory for both sexes. [278], In 1989, Gaddafi was overjoyed by the foundation of the Arab Maghreb Union, uniting Libya in an economic pact with Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, viewing it as beginnings of a new pan-Arab union. [96] In 1970, a law was introduced affirming equality of the sexes and insisting on wage parity. Gaddafi's government was overthrown in the wake of the fall of Tripoli to the rebel forces on 20 August 2011, although pockets of resistance held by forces in support of Gaddafi's government held out for another two months, especially in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, which he declared the new capital of Libya on 1 September 2011. Gaddafi was found hiding in a culvert west of Sirte and captured by National Transitional Council forces. [488] Gaddafi's state has also been characterized as authoritarian. He presided over the eight-member Council of Ministers, of whom six, like Maghrabi, were civilians and two – Adam Said Hawwaz and Musa Ahmad – were military officers. Thereafter, output stabilized at about two million barrels per day. [388] Gaddafi's Arab nationalist views led him to the pan-Arabist belief in the need for unity across the Arab world, combining the Arab nation under a single nation-state. [104], To combat the country's strong regional and tribal divisions, the RCC promoted the idea of a unified pan-Libyan identity. [267], In March, hundreds of political prisoners were freed, with Gaddafi falsely claiming that there were no further political prisoners in Libya. [226], Libya had sought to improve relations with the US under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, for instance by courting his brother, the businessman Billy Carter,[227] but in 1979 the US placed Libya on its list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism". Conversely, he was internationally condemned as a dictator whose authoritarian administration violated the human rights of Libyan citizens, persecuted dissidents abroad, and supported international terrorism. [35] In October 1961, he led a demonstration protesting against Syria's secession from the UAR, and raised funds to send cables of support to Nasser. [95] In Britain, Gaddafi's best-known political subsidiary is the Workers Revolutionary Party. [468] According to Bearman, Gaddafi "evoked the extremes of passion: supreme adoration from his following, bitter contempt from his opponents". Despite receiving extensive aid and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and its allies, Gaddafi retained close ties to pro-American governments in Western Europe, largely by courting Western oil companies with promises of access to lucrative Libyan energy sectors. [412] He was driven by a sense of "divine mission", believing himself a conduit of God's will, and thought that he must achieve his goals "no matter what the cost". On 7 September 1969, the RCC announced that it had appointed a cabinet to conduct the government of the new republic. [270] From 1994 through to 1997, the government initiated cleansing committees to root out corruption, particularly in the economic sector. [103] This popularity was partly due to Gaddafi's personal charisma, youth and underdog status as a Bedouin, as well as his rhetoric emphasizing his role as the successor to the anti-Italian fighter Omar Mukhtar. Many socialist policies remained however, with subsidiaries of logistics company HB Group being nationalized in 2007. After the king had fled the country, the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) headed by Gaddafi abolished the monarchy and the old constitution and established the Libyan Arab Republic, with the motto "freedom, socialism and unity". [495] Human rights groups also criticized the treatment of migrants, including asylum seekers, who passed through Gaddafi's Libya on their way to Europe. [37] Maintaining his interest in Arab nationalist activism, he refused to join any of the banned political parties active in the city—including the Arab Nationalist Movement, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood—claiming that he rejected factionalism. The measures created resentment and opposition among the newly dispossessed. [110] During the early 1970s, Gaddafi formulated his own particular approach to Arab nationalism and socialism, known as Third International Theory, which The New York Times described as a combination of "utopian socialism, Arab nationalism, and the Third World revolutionary theory that was in vogue at the time". [92], The RCC implemented measures for social reform, adopting sharia as a basis. He went against who hired him. In 1972, the United States recalled its ambassador. 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