Gadafi:highlight of life

The former dictator of Libya Muammar al-Gaddafi was charismatic, controversial, eccentric and highly recognizable. Many consider him a despot though to some Arab Africans he was a nation-builder and a patriot. He was a source of constant trouble to Western powers with his sponsorship of terrorism and his zeal to unite the continent into a United States of Africa. Here’s a photographic overview of significant moments of his 40-year reign.

On September 27, 1969, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overthrew King Idris of Libya in a military putsch. In 1963 Gaddafi formed the Free Officers Movement, a group of revolutionary army officers, which overthrew King Idris of Libya and proclaimed Libya, in the name of "freedom, socialism and unity," Socialist People's Jamahiriya. He was 28 years old. (AP Photo)

Gaddafi (right) and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in Suez, Egypt. Gaddafi was a great admirer of Nasser.(AP Photo/Farouk Ibrahim)

Gaddafi with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat (right) in Cairo 1973 entered an agreement to unify Egypt and Libya. (AP Photo)

Colonel Gaddafi with Josip Broz Tito, the authoritarian leader of the erstwhile East European nation of Yugoslavia, in Belgrade. (AP Photo)

Gaddafi addresses the press on November 24, 1973 after meeting French President Georges Pompidou on the steps of the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP Photo/Dardenas)

Gaddafi with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (far left) and Algeria’s head of state Houari Boumedienne.(AP Photo)

Gaddafi waves to a crowd as he rides a horse during a ceremony marking the sixth anniversary of the eviction of Italians from Libya. (AP Photo)

Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat, right, raises his hands in a salute to delegates, with Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, center, and PLO leader George Habash, at the Arab Nations Summit in Tripoli, Libya, on Dec. 4, 1977. Habash, whose radical PLO faction gained notoriety after the simultaneous hijackings of four Western airliners in 1970 and the seizure of an Air France flight to Entebbe

Safia Gaddafi greets her husband on his arrival at the airport in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1973. Gaddafi met Safia Farkash née el-Brasai (right), a former nurse, in 1969 while he was hospitalized with appendicitis during the revolt that brought him to power. (AP Photo/Harry Koundakjian)

Picture taken in Tripoli on December 2, 1997 of Libyan leader Moamar el-Gadhafi and his wife Safiya. (AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis)

Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi, making a speech at the opening of the Maghrebin summit in Marrakech Town Hill on Feb. 16, 1989. (AP Photo/Pierre Gleizes)

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi flanked by his female bodyguards, dubbed deridingly by the West as the “Amazonian Guard”.(AP photo/Riccardo De Luca

Gaddafi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shake hands at the end of a two-day visit in Tripoli, April 17, 2008. Russia said it will write off US$4.5 billion in Libyan debt in exchange for multibillion dollar deals for its firms. (AP Photo/Abdel Magid Al Fergany)

April 21, 2009: Libya’s National Security Adviser Al-Mu'tasim-Billah al-Gaddafi (Gaddafi’s fifth son) in Washington, DC with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was killed along with his father on October 20, 2011. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

A portrait depicting Libya's former ruler Moammar Gadhafi is riddled with bullet marks and vandalized with paint on a wall in Tripoli, Libya. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

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