Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled Libya since seizing power in a 1969 coup, was captured hiding in a drainage pipe near Sirte after his convoy fled a NATO airstrike. Militia fighters beat and shot him; graphic phone footage of his final moments circulated worldwide within hours, marking a brutal end to the Libyan civil war and the Arab Spring's most violent regime change.
Gaddafi had spent his final weeks as a fugitive in his own country, moving between hideouts as the National Transitional Council's forces, backed by NATO air power, closed in on his last strongholds. On the morning of October 20th, a NATO airstrike hit his fleeing convoy of roughly 75 vehicles outside Sirte, and Gaddafi, along with a small group of loyalists, took shelter in drainage culverts beneath a highway.
Revolutionary fighters found him there, disoriented and reportedly saying 'don't shoot,' before dragging him out, beating him, and eventually killing him—the exact sequence remains disputed, but cellphone videos showed him bloodied and alive before his death, and dead shortly after. His body was displayed in a Misrata meat locker for days as Libyans came to confirm the end of four decades of erratic, often brutal rule. The country's subsequent collapse into militia rivalry and civil war would complicate the simple narrative of liberation the images seemed to promise that day.
Key people: Muammar Gaddafi