TRIPOLI, Libya – During nearly 42 years in power in Libya, Moammar Gadhafi was one of the world’s most eccentric dictators, so mercurial that he was both condemned and courted by the West, while he brutally warped his country with his idiosyncratic vision of autocratic rule until he was finally toppled by his own people.
The modern Arab world’s longest-ruling figure, Libya’s “Brother Leader” displayed striking contrasts. He was a sponsor of terrorism whose regime was blamed for blowing up two passenger jets, who then helped the U.S. in the war on terror. He was an Arab nationalist who mocked Arab rulers. In the crowning paradox, he preached a “revolutionary” utopia of people power but ran a one-man dictatorship that fueled the revolution against him.
His death on Thursday at age 69 — confirmed by Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril — came as Libyan fighters defeated Gadhafi’s last holdouts in his hometown of Sirte, the last major site of resistance in the country in an eight-month civil war.
Interim government officials said his son, Muatassim, a former national security adviser, was also killed in Sirte on Thursday. Another, British-educated Seif al-Islam — widely seen as being groomed as a successor — was captured with
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