Libya, 1975 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
In August 1975 the regime of Muammar Gaddafi announced that it had forestalled an attempted coup against him in Libya, uncovering a conspiracy among senior figures of the ruling establishment. All thirteen leading conspirators were members of the Free Officers Movement that had brought Gaddafi to power in 1969, and four of them, including the planning minister Umar Muhayshi, Bashir Houadi, Abdul Munim el-Houni, and Awad Hamza, were members of the Revolutionary Command Council itself, the small junta at the apex of the state. The plotters were said to be motivated by disagreement with Gaddafi's radical pan Arab spending and his handling of the economy; Muhayshi favored investing Libya's oil revenues in domestic agriculture and industry.
The coup was suppressed, Muhayshi fled to Tunisia and then Egypt, where he became a prominent exile critic of Gaddafi, and most of the other alleged conspirators were executed in March 1976. Gaddafi survived and tightened his grip on the increasingly personal Libyan regime.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
62008051975- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-620-1975-08-04
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Muammar Gaddafi forestalled the August 1975 coup, executed most plotters, and consolidated his rule.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
New York Times
The Sun
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →