Mehdi Mohammed Zeyo

Mehdi Mohammed Zeyo (c. 1962 – 20 February 2011) was a Libyan middle manager for a state oil company in Benghazi, Libya. In the wake of the Libyan Civil War, Zeyo found he could no longer bury the civilian youth killed by Muammar Gaddafi's forces; he subsequently decided to use his car to blow up the gates to a military base in Benghazi. This allowed the civilian oppositional fighters to overrun the base and claim Benghazi as an oppositional stronghold in the Libyan Civil War.

Background
NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro describes Zeyo as "the most unlikely hero of the Libyan Civil War." As an older gentleman of 49 amongst the youth democracy protesters, the middle-manager for a state oil company joined the peaceful protest movement as soon as it began.

Life
He was an 48 year old oil manager in the state oil company, with two daughters. He suffered from diabetes. Acorring to his family, his home was about 200 yards from the Katiba, and he saw a young man shot to death right outside his front door. He had a soft heart and often cried when watching television dramas with his wife and daughter on the living-room couch. He disliked politics and tended toward moderation in all things: he would walk away when he heard religious extremists fulminating about right and wrong at the local mosque. His daughter, Zuhour, claimed after three days of brutal fighting and seeing friends die, something in Ziu snapped. “He kept saying, ‘Jihad, jihad, this is the time for us all to go out and fight,’ ” “If you heard this man,” Zuhour continued, “you would know he was ready for something.”

Role in the Battle of Benghazi
Under the guise of a car attending a funeral procession for protesters passing through the Kaithiba compound, he suddenly drove his car, loaded with two propane gas canisters, into the main gates of the compound blowing them up. Within a few hours the compound was taken, effectively winning the battle for the rebels.

He had been alongside other anti-Government protesters the days before, and according to his wife, he would come home with his clothes smeared with blood from carrying dying and wounded comrades and then On 20 February, sickened by the carnage, he loaded his black Kia with the propane cylinders without telling anyone. A number of guards for the Kaithiba were also said to have been killed by the resulting explosion. -->