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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

20. A Creepy Womanizer

Gaddafi was creepy. He had a habit of hitting on female reporters, often meeting them for interviews in bathrobes or in his underwear. He also became obsessed with former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, referring to her as his “darling black African woman“. When she visited Tripoli, Gaddafi showered her with over $200,000 worth of gifts, including a lute and a locket with his picture inside.

Gaddafi, trailed by some of his Amazonian Guard. The Mirror

Gaddafi also saw himself as a fashion icon, and to that end cultivated an odd collection of ensembles and sartorial choices that made him modern history’s most bizarrely dressed ruler. Changing in and out of silly uniforms multiple times a day, he was the closest real life depiction of a James Bond villain. The cartoonish villain look was further enhanced by his all-virgin female bodyguard, officially named the “Revolutionary Nuns”, but known more commonly as the Amazonian Guard.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.