Libya, 2013 — dissident coup attempt

Event Summary

On 10 October 2013 armed gunmen abducted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan of Libya from a Tripoli hotel in the pre dawn hours, holding him for several hours in an episode the government described as an attempted coup before he was released unharmed. Libya, in the chaotic aftermath of the 2011 revolution and the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, had descended into a state of near ungovernability, its weak transitional government unable to control the myriad armed militias, many of them former revolutionary brigades, that held real power across the country and were nominally on the state payroll. Zeidan's abduction was carried out by fighters from such militias, reportedly angered by his government's perceived complicity in a United States raid days earlier that had captured an al Qaeda suspect on Libyan soil.

The gunmen seized the prime minister and took him to an unknown location, but the operation lacked broader support and unraveled within hours; other militias and officials intervened, and Zeidan was freed. The brazen kidnapping laid bare the impotence of Libya's central authority and the dominance of the militias, foreshadowing the slide into full civil war and rival governments that would engulf the country in 2014.