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Photos: Gadhafi Through The Years
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1969: Col. Moammar Gadhafi (right), two years before he seized power in a coup. He and a group of revolutionary army officers ended the 18-year reign of King Idris.
AP
2 of
1977: Gadhafi bonds with Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat (right) and George Habash at an Arab Nations Summit in Tripoli. In the 1970s, Gadhafi pushed for uniting all Arab states into one and published his political manifesto, The Green Book.
AP
3 of
1988: Investigators sift through the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded midair over Lockerbie, Scotland. The 270 dead included everyone on the plane and 11 on the ground. Libya did not officially take responsibility for the bombing until 2003.
AP
4 of
1998: Gadhafi speaks at a press conference about the potential handover of two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The men were turned over the following year; one was convicted.
CNN
5 of
2004: Gadhafi visits the European Union in Brussels — his first official trip outside Africa or the Middle East since 1989. The trip marked another step in Gadhafi's quest to remake his image after years of international sanctions. In 2003, he agreed to give up his unconventional weapons program and to compensate relatives of Lockerbie bombing victims.
AFP
6 of
2008: Russia's Vladimir Putin (center) meets with Gadhafi (right) in Tripoli. Putin spent two days in Libya on an official visit to rebuild Russian-Libyan relations.
Artyom Korotayev
7 of
2009: Gadhafi finishes an hour-and-a-half speech during his first visit to the United Nations in New York. His speech came shortly after he welcomed back to Libya the man convicted in the Pam Am bombing, who'd been released from prison on medical grounds.
Stan Honda
8 of
2009: Gadhafi poses with (from left) Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Russia's Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama of the United States and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during a G8 summit in Italy.
Oli Scarff
9 of
Feb. 24, 2011: Libyan nationals protest Gadhafi's regime in front of a building housing the Libyan embassy in Washington, D.C. Anti-government protests in Libya sparked a bloody crackdown by Gadhafi as opposition forces took control of the country's eastern half.
Jewel Samad
