World's Worst Dictators

Muammar Gaddafi:

Muammar Gaddafi rose to power at age 27 when he led a bloodless coup to overthrow the ruling monarch. He was later appointed commander in chief of the armed forces and chairman of Libya's newly instated governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council. It was then that he began to slowly assume the entirety of power. He started by eliminating the U.S. and British military bases in 1970 and in time he would eliminate the parliament, political parties, unions and nongovernmental organizations.

Gaddafi 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 at first held out in the battle for Sirte against NATO's bombing attacks and the NTC's advances, Gaddafi was captured alive in Sirte by members of the Libyan National Liberation Army (NLA) after his fleet was attacked by NATO warplanes. Gaddafi was allegedly killed when rebel forces finally captured his hometown, Sirt where the last remnants of the Gaddafi regime had held out in the middle of weeks of difficult, grisly fighting.