On the morning of October 20, 2011, a convoy of blacked-out vehicles tore through the dust of Sirte’s coastal highway. The desert sun hung low over the Mediterranean, burning the air into a bleached shimmer. Moammar Gaddafi sat hunched inside one of the armored trucks, a grey flak vest wrapped over his faded khaki shirt. The man who had ruled Libya for forty-two years — who had once hosted presidents, fought wars, and styled himself as the “King of Kings of Africa” — was now on the run, his empire reduced to gunfire and broken stone. NATO aircraft roared above. Below, fighters loyal to the uprising closed in. The end had begun.
The convoy didn’t make it far. As it pushed west along the coastal road, French reconnaissance jets tracked it from above. Around 8:30 a.m., the planes radioed in a strike. A moment later, bombs dropped from the sky, splitting the road and scattering bodies across the sand. Smoke rose. Gaddafi survived the blast and staggered away on foot, bleeding, disoriented, hiding beneath a highway culvert along with his defense minister, a few loyal guards, and his longtime aide and son, Mutassim.
They huddled in a concrete drainpipe, the air thick with the smell of diesel, sweat, and blood. From inside, Gaddafi could hear the rebel forces — the Misrata brigades — sweeping the field, shouting, searching, firing. One fighter, Abdul Samir, later recalled stepping over charred corpses before hearing a low voice echo from the tunnel. “What’s going on?” it asked in Arabic. The voice was familiar to anyone who had grown up in Libya. It belonged to the man whose face once stared from every banknote, billboard, and schoolbook.
They dragged him out.
What happened next was filmed, shared, and seen across the world. Cell phone footage captured the chaos — fighters screaming, spitting, shooting into the air. Gaddafi’s face, streaked with blood, turned upward in confusion. He was struck in the head, was jabbed with a bayonet. Gaddafi begged. Gaddafi cursed. The crowd roared. By the time a convoy reached Misrata, he was dead.
To many in Libya, that moment marked the end of a nightmare. For others, it was the beginning of something worse. The country fractured. People turned on each other. Militias multiplied. Elections failed. Western governments watched the state dissolve but offered little help. A power vacuum widened, sucking in arms, ambition, and old grievances. But one question never left: who, exactly, killed Gaddafi — and why?
In legal terms, no one has been held responsible. There was no trial, no tribunal, no investigation with teeth. The United Nations called for an inquiry. Human rights groups demanded transparency. But nearly fourteen years later, the answers remain scattered across interviews, leaked emails, classified airstrike logs, and quiet testimonies from men who were there. What they reveal is not a single bullet or name, but a web — one where NATO, rebel militias, foreign governments, and shifting loyalties all played a role.
Gaddafi had ruled with a mixture of violence, ideology, and theatrical control. After seizing power in a 1969 military coup, he nationalized oil, expelled Italians, and declared a “Jamahiriya” — a state supposedly ruled by the people through local councils. In reality, it was ruled by fear. Political dissent meant torture or death. Entire families disappeared. Oil money bankrolled vanity projects and foreign rebellions alike. At times, he funded armed groups from Northern Ireland to Palestine. He was accused of ordering assassinations abroad. In 1988, Libya was blamed for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.
But he was also courted. Western leaders welcomed him back into global circles after he agreed to abandon his nuclear program in 2003. Tony Blair shook his hand. Condoleezza Rice called Libya a partner. Investment poured in. By 2011, Gaddafi had become a complicated figure: brutal, yes — but also useful, wealthy, and still in control of vast reserves of oil, gas, and gold.
Then came the Arab Spring. In February, protests erupted in Benghazi and Tripoli. Gaddafi’s response was swift and violent. His troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators. As international outrage grew, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973, authorizing the use of “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. That vague phrase became the basis for NATO’s bombing campaign, led primarily by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Over seven months, NATO carried out more than 26,000 air sorties in Libya, targeting government forces, command centers, and supply lines.
Officially, the intervention was humanitarian. But emails later released from the U.S. State Department show how deeply strategic concerns were also at play. Gaddafi, according to some intelligence reports, had considered shifting Libya’s oil sales to gold-backed currency, challenging the dominance of the dollar and euro. France, in particular, had significant financial and political interests in Libya — including concerns that Gaddafi’s influence in francophone Africa might undercut their own.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had been among the first to push for military action. Later, reports surfaced suggesting that Gaddafi had secretly funneled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. If true, it meant that a sitting Western leader had taken money from the very man he helped overthrow. Sarkozy has denied the accusations. But the investigation continues.
On the ground, the fight was led by a patchwork of rebel groups — many local, some tribal, others Islamist. The Misrata brigades were among the fiercest. Their city had suffered some of the worst bombardment during the war. When they found out Gaddafi was fleeing through Sirte, they moved quickly. Fighters from Zintan and Benghazi were also closing in, but it was Misrata’s men who got there first.
One of them was Omran Shaban, a 22-year-old former computer student turned soldier. He was the first to identify and point out Gaddafi in the drainpipe. Months later, Shaban would be captured by Gaddafi loyalists during a mission near Bani Walid. He was tortured for weeks and later died from his injuries in a French hospital. In death, he became a martyr for the revolution. But the footage he helped capture would be used not as evidence in court — but as viral spectacle.
The video of Gaddafi’s death spread faster than any government press release. People watched it on YouTube, Twitter, and satellite news. Some cheered. Others recoiled. In Washington, President Barack Obama spoke cautiously. “The shadow of tyranny has been lifted,” he said. But there was no investigation into who killed him. NATO insisted its role ended with the airstrike. The fighters on the ground claimed it was chaos, not execution.
Yet forensic analysis tells a different story. The autopsy showed Gaddafi had died from a gunshot wound to the head — fired at close range. Human rights observers documented evidence of abuse before his death. Still, no one was held accountable. In Libya, the transitional government was too fragile to act. International courts, focused on Syria and elsewhere, turned their attention away.
For those who had lived under his rule, the silence was bitter. Many wanted justice, not vengeance. Others simply wanted peace. But Gaddafi’s fall had opened the floodgates. Tribal militias, warlords, and foreign actors began carving up the country. Weapons from his looted armories flowed south into the Sahel, fueling other insurgencies. ISIS found footholds in the vacuum. Migrant routes through Libya became more dangerous. A decade of civil war followed.
The man who may have fired the fatal shot has never been publicly identified. Rumors circulate — of a young fighter, shaken by the act, now living abroad. Others say it was multiple men. Some Libyans still whisper that Western special forces were on the ground that day, guiding events from behind the scenes. There is no confirmed evidence of that. What is known is that Gaddafi was alive when found, disarmed when captured, and dead by the time he reached Misrata. The Geneva Conventions call that a war crime.
Yet the world moved on. Governments that once shook his hand barely acknowledged his death. NATO declared the mission a success. No apology was offered. No apology was asked.
Today, the culvert where Gaddafi died still exists. Tourists sometimes visit it. Graffiti marks the concrete. The surrounding fields remain quiet, empty except for wind and time. But inside Libya, the impact of that day lingers. Young men who once fought in the revolution are now old enough to regret it. Families displaced by the fighting still live in camps. The promise of democracy feels distant.
And the question still echoes: who killed Gaddafi? Was it the rebel with the rifle? The pilot in the jet? The foreign governments that armed both? The silence of those who looked away?
It may never be fully answered. The truth, like Gaddafi’s body, was buried in haste — wrapped in a shroud, hidden under a desert dawn, far from the cameras, without a grave marker. Only the wind knows where.
