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Like Saddam Hussein other dictators killed or executed

December 30, 2006
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Other dictators killed or executed

Hamburg (dpa) - While some former dictators have been able to click their heels in repose at the end of dubious careers, others like Iraq's Saddam Hussein had to face justice in a court of law.

Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, in December 1989, saw a short military trial for his 24 years of plunder that left thousands of his fellow citizens dead.

Only few days after the fall of his regime, the former Communist party chief and dictator and his wife saw themselves facing a firing squad. Their executions were later replayed on television over and over again.

Several African dictators also found that their one-party rule ultimately led to their own demise.

Laurent Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was shot by his own bodyguard in January 2001, as was Ibrahim Barre Mainassara, the iron-fisted Niger leader, in April 1999.

Liberia's brutal Samuel Doe was himself subjected to brutality when tortured to death after his government fell in 1990.

In August 1979, Equatorial Guinea's Francisco Macias Nguema was toppled after 11 years of violent leadership. He was caught on the run, and a month later put to death.

In Europe, in April 1945, Adolf Hitler would certainly have found himself sentenced to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity over the killing of more than six million Jews in th Holocaust, if he had not decided to commit suicide in the last days of World War II.

Hitler's ally Benito "Il Duce" Mussolini was just days before caught in flight with his mistress by partisans, shot and displayed on meathooks. // © 2006

 
Iraqi Americans react to Saddam Hussein's impending execution in Dearborn Michigan on Friday 29 December 2006. EPA/JEFF KOWALSKY

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