Bashir Sadawi

C. 1882 - 1957

Libyan (Tripolitanian) politician.

Associated with the Tripolitanian republic after World War I, Bashir Sadawi was in exile for many years, during which he acted as adviser to the Saudi Arabian monarchy of Ibn Saʿud. In 1947, with Arab League support, he founded the National Council for the Liberation of Libya in Cairo to promote the unity of the regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In 1949, popular protests against Anglo-Italian trusteeship proposals for Libya prompted several political groups to form the Tripolitanian National Congress party under Sadawi's leadership. During the many years of international debate on Libya's future (1945 - 1949) and the subsequent preparations for independence under UN supervision (1949 - 1951), Sadawi emerged as Tripolitania's leading politician, consistently supporting a unitary Libyan state and Amir Idris al-Sayyid Muhammad al-Sanusi as the sole leader capable of uniting the country.

Sadawi's political hopes were dashed, first by the decision that independent Libya was to be a federal kingdom under Idris, then with the failure of his National Congress party to win as many seats as expected in the first postindependence elections in February 1952. The government used postelection riots as an excuse to deport Sadawi, who returned to Saudi royal service.

Bibliography

Pelt, Adrian. Libyan Independence and the United Nations: A Case of Planned Decolonization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970.

— JOHN L. WRIGHT