Gadhafi's Death: The End of an Eccentric Leader

Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, who was killed when his hometown Sirte fell on Thursday after refusing to surrender, ruled his North African country for 42 years before being ousted in August.

Renowned for his flamboyant dress sense and rambling rhetoric, the embattled Libyan leader, 69, came up against an unprecedented challenge to his rule after anti-regime protests erupted on February 15.

Even after National Transitional Council forces overran his fortified Tripoli headquarters on August 23, Gadhafi evaded capture and vowed to fight on against the NATO-backed rebels in defiant audio messages.

The NTC said Gadhafi had been captured when Sirte fell to its fighters and that he was badly wounded, before later announcing he had "died in the custody of the revolution."

As a young colonel, Gadhafi on September 1, 1969 led a coup overthrowing the Western-backed elderly King Idriss and quickly established himself as a belligerent and unpredictable leader.

Reputedly born in a Bedouin tent in the desert near Sirte on June 7, 1942, Gadhafi alienated the West soon after seizing power, accusing it of launching a "new crusade" against the Arabs.

His idol was Egyptian president and fervent Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he also variously declared himself a fan of Stalin and Hitler.

For decades linked to a spate of international terror attacks, Gadhafi’s Libya was accused of using its oil wealth to fund and arm rebel groups across Africa and beyond.

Libya became an international pariah in the aftermath of the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing, but relations began to thaw when it agreed in 2003 to pay compensation to the families of the 270 people killed.

Gadhafi also renounced terrorism and declared in 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that he was giving up the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, prompting the lifting of U.N. sanctions.

The declaration also shored up dramatically Libya's ties with the West and was crowned with a visit in September 2008 by then U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

In February 2009, Gadhafi was elected chairman of the African Union, after having grown disillusioned with Arab unity and months after African tribal dignitaries bestowed on him the title of "king of kings."

He was known for receiving world leaders in a Bedouin tent rather than in palatial buildings, and dressed in colorful flowing robes, surrounded by an entourage of female bodyguards.

Gadhafi’s Libya was often the focus of international attention.

In 2007, Tripoli released Bulgarian medics who had spent eight years in jail for allegedly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV-tainted blood.

In 2008, the festive homecoming of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, who was released by Scottish authorities on compassionate grounds, triggered fury in the United States.

And an apology to Libya the same year by Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz over the 2007 arrest of one of Gadhafi’s sons, Hannibal, drew harsh criticism across the Alpine nation.

But the Arab world's longest-serving leader still managed to rile the West and Arab leaders with belligerent and provocative outbursts.

In July 2009, he blasted the U.N. Security Council as a form of "terrorism" in a speech at a Non-Aligned Movement summit.

In March the same year, he hurled insults at now Saudi King Abdullah at an Arab summit, telling him: "You are always lying and you're facing the grave and you were made by Britain and protected by the United States."

Gadhafi could be quick to praise himself. "I am the leader of the Arab leaders, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of the Muslims," he has said.

Having proclaimed Libya a Jamahiriya or "state of the masses" run by local committees in March 1977, Gadhafi was officially known as "guide of the revolution" as he has always shunned formal titles such as president.

He donned a white glove at an Arab summit to avoid "soiling his hand" by shaking with Arab kings.

Gadhafi’s revolutionary "Green Book," also published in 1977, offers "a third theory of the world" between capitalism and socialism that he vaunts as the only real solution for humanity.