In 1969, military forces in Libya loyal to the nation's ruler, King Idris I (pictured), thwarted an attempted coup by a cabal of army officers driven by a stridently anti-Western ideology mixing Islam, nationalism and socialism.
Libyan Coup Foiled by Eric LippsAmong the officers involved in the coup was a colonel named Muammar al-Qaddafi. Col. Qaddafi would never face trial, however, having been shot and fatally wounded in the final confrontation between the would-be revolutionaries and the King's forces. Following his death, a minor personality cult would grow up around him among student leftists, just as had happened with Cuba's Che Guevara.