Word: senussi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Tobruk and lives by the tenets of the Senussi sect, which holds Libya's diverse tribesmen together: no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee, no immodesty. So modest and unassuming is Idris that he ordered his own image removed from Libya's postage stamps and currency and has given two of his palaces to the state...
...brought a new trick to desert fighting. Between lines of trucks he strung electrified wires, then drove the sword-swinging Senussi horsemen into the electric net. He rounded up 80,000 noncombatant men, women and children, and put them in concentration camps. In pursuit of the Senussi he sent "flying tribunals," which tortured their captives, hung them in bags from tall trees and dropped them out of airplanes. When Senussi Chief Omar El Muktar surrendered and asked for the status of a forgiven enemy, Graziani had him shot as a bandit...
...work with him. A provisional assembly of 60 Libyans-20 from each province-meeting under the U.N.'s wing, decided that the country should be a federal monarchy, drafted its constitution, and planned elections. Without argument, the assembly settled on a King-Sayid Mohammed Idris el Mahdi el Senussi, Emir of Cyrenaica, spiritual and political leader of the devout and powerful Moslem Order of the Senussiya, and in his own right the strongest personality in Libya...
...scholarly, fine-boned Arab of 62, who wears the blue robes of a Bedouin monarch and speaks in a high, thin voice, King Idris I led his Senussi tribesmen in two wars against the Italians, now uses a converted Italian barracks near Benghazi as his palace. He trusts the West, and privately refers to the seven-nation Arab League as "an alliance of weaknesses." But recognizing Libya's kinship with the rest of the Moslem world, he plans to join the Arab League. "If anybody ever succeeds in cementing this country together," says an English veteran of Libya...