five generations of oppositional forces which included Islamic fundamentalists who opposed his radical reforms, a few active monarchists, members of the old pre-Gaddafist elite, conservative nationalists who backed his Arab nationalist agenda but opposed his left-wing economic reforms, and technocrats who had their future prospects stunted by the 1969 coup. He also faced opposition from rival socialists such as Ba'athists and Marxists; during the Civil War, he was criticized by both left-of-centre and right-of-centre governments for overseeing human rights abuses. Gaddafi became a bogeyman for Western governments, who presented him as the "vicious dictator of an oppressed people". For these critics, Gaddafi was "despotic, cruel, arrogant, vain and stupid," with Pargeter noting that "for many years, he came to be personified in the international media as a kind of super villain." According to critics, Libya's people lived in a climate of fear under Gaddafi's administration, due to his government's pervasive surveillance of civilians. Gaddafi's Libya was typically described by Western commentators as a police state, with many U.S. right-wingers believing that Gaddafi was a Marxist-Leninist in a close relationship with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi's state has also been characterized as authoritarian. His administration has also been criticized by political opponents and groups like Amnesty International for the human rights abuses carried out by the country's security services. These abuses included the repression of dissent, public executions, and the arbitrary detention of hundreds of opponents, some of whom reported being tortured. One of the most prominent examples of this was a massacre that took place in Abu Salim prison in June 1996; Human Rights Watch estimated that 1,270 prisoners were massacred. Dissidents abroad were labelled "stray dogs"; they were publicly threatened with death and sometimes killed by government hit squads, or returned home by force to face imprisonment or death. The most notable victims were Umar Muhayshi and Mansour Rashid El-Kikhia. Government ministers Muhammad Harati, Attie Kasseh, Ibrahim Bechari, and Colonel Hassan Ishkal were killed in suspicious car accidents. At least 35 opposition figures were killed extrajudicially outside of Libya due to Gaddafi's "stray dogs" policy. Libyan ambassador to Italy, Ammar Dhu, and military officer, Salih Bu Farwa, were allegedly killed for spreading rumors about Gaddafi having Jewish heritage from his mother's side. Libyan businessman and anti-Gaddafi dissident Jaballa Matar was abducted in Egypt in 1990 and never seen again; the account of his disappearance was the subject of his son