Said bin Taimur
On 23 July 1970, Said bin Taimur was deposed. The coup d'état succeeded because the Omani army's chief intelligence officer in the Dhofar, Brigadier John Graham, and Colonel Hugh Oldman, military (later defence) secretary and supreme commander of the army in Muscat, insisted that Said surrender. When Qaboos confronted his father, accompanied by Graham, shots were fired. The Sultan was flown out of Oman by the RAF to Bahrain.