Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr (1952-20 October 2011) was Minister of Defense of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from January 1970 to 20 October 2011, succeeding the Council of Ministers.
Biography[]
Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr was born in 1952 in Jalu, Kingdom of Libya. He shared classes with the young Muammar Gaddafi at the Military Academy in Benghazi, Libya, and they joined the Free Officers Movement in 1969, overthrowing King Idris I of Libya in a bloodless coup and installing Gaddafi as the new dictator. Along with twelve other generals, he was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, and he was the Minister of Defense of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for 41 years. During the 2011 Libyan Civil War, he was briefly arrested for refusing to order his troops to fire on protesters, but he would be reinstated as Minister of Defense upon his relief shortly after. Jabr visited troops on the frontline in Brega and announced that defectors who wished to rejoin the army would be protected by a general pardon. On 20 October 2011, he hid inside of a drainage pipe outside of Sirte with Muammar Gaddafi as the battle of Sirte and the civil war neared their end, and he attempted to flee. He threw a grenade at the opposition soldiers, but it bounced back; Jabr's guard tried to pick it up to throw it back, but it exploded, killing both the guard and Jabr. Militants filmed them vandalizing Jabr's body with spray paint and humiliating his corpse, contradicting Islamic law.