As civil state of war fury in Libya , many commentator are calling for Qaddafi to step down and go into expatriate . This would n’t be the first time an oppressive leader has abuse aside in exchange for a relatively well-to-do retirement overseas . We ’ve roll up this handy list of far-famed exiled emperors and dictators for reference .
1. Napoleon Bonaparte (Elba and St. Helena)
The original exiled potentate , Napoleon did it double for good measure . This Corsican military genius was beloved by his Gallic subjects but not so much by his alien enemies , of whom there were a good bit following his brutal conquest of Europe ( which left 3.4 million dead ) .
After his calamitous invasion of Russia in 1812 , Napoleon abdicated the throne in 1814 and was exiled to the pleasant island of Elba , just off the sea-coast of Italy . It was n’t far enough : in 1815 Napoleon snuck back into France with his shock troop , meet an army , and was scarcely defeated by the British and Prussians at Waterloo .
The British – beyond furious about having to fight a whole redundant state of war – next exiled Napoleon to St. Helena , a tiny rock in the South Atlantic . Here Napoleon compose his memoirs while maybe slowly being poisoned with arsenic ; when he died in 1821 at the historic period of 51 , his non-Christian priest and handmaiden allegedly removed and preserved his penis . The Hammond organ was buy by a Columbia University urologist , John K. Lattimer , for $ 3,000 in 1977 .
2. Napoleon III (England)
Banking off his relation to his famed uncle , Louis Napoleon was elected Chief Executive of the French Republic in 1848 , then declared himself Emperor Napoleon III in 1851 ( Napoleon Bonaparte ’s son had in short ruled as Napoleon II in 1815 ) . A splintering off the old Bonaparte block , Napoleon III tried to conquer everything the British had n’t snap up already , reconstruct Paris as a modern metropolis , and helped unite Italy . But for the most part his foreign schema precipitate prostrate than a failed soufflé : his marionette ruler of Mexico , Maximilian I , was overthrown and fulfill in 1867 , and Napoleon III himself was overthrown in 1870 following a mortifying defeat by the Prussians at Sedan .
The ex - emperor butterfly populate out his remaining days in exile with his married woman and Logos in Chislehurst , England , from whence he hoped to be re - elect Chief Executive of France ( expert luck ) and lobby the British parliament to create an International Arbitration Congress — a farsighted precursor to the United Nations ( it never happened ) . He died in 1873 during an cognitive process to plow a bladder stone and was buried in a sarcophagus donated by Queen Victoria , in a funeral attended by 30,000 adorer from all over Europe .
3. Kaiser Wilhelm II (Holland)
After point Germany into the disastrous First World War , the blustery Kaiser terminate up on the wrong side of account with Germany ’s frustration in 1918 . Blamed by Western public opinion for starting the war and allowing German atrocities , Wilhelm abdicated and buy the farm into exile in neighbor Holland , where he was protected from prosecution for warfare crimes by his full cousin , Queen Wilhelmina .
In 1919 he bought a small castling in the Dutch urban center of Doorn , where he pass his persist years writing his memoirs and charge the First World War on anyone except himself . With the rising of the Nazis , Wilhelm hop he might be reinstated as Kaiser , but Adolf Hitler had no intention of share power with the unaired old king , whom he dismissed as a relic of history . Wilhelm died in June 1941 , just week before Germany ’s ill - fill out invasion of the Soviet Union , which was destine to bring Germany to ruin ( again ) .
4. Idi Amin (Libya and Saudi Arabia)
But the refugees were the lucky single : Amin also unleashed carnage against rival African ethnical groups , whom he accused of collaborating with Western imperialistic spies , ultimately murder about 300,000 mass , or 1.7 % of the country ’s population . In 1975 Amin gave Palestinian terrorist dependable harbor when they pirate an Air France spirt . ( He was also accused of being a cannibal , although this was never proved . )
The end came when he invaded Tanzania in 1978 , provoking a counter - invasion and popular uprising that storm him to flee by whirlybird in 1979 . Amin first headed to Libya , where Qaddafi welcome him with opened arms . In 1980 Amin locate in Saudi Arabia , where the Saudi majestic family subsidized his luxurious exile in payoff for ( mostly ) ride out out of difficulty . He buy the farm of kidney failure and was forget in Jeddah , Saudi Arabia , in 2003 .
5. Shah of Iran (Egypt, Morocco, The Bahamas, Mexico, The U.S., Panama, and Egypt again)
The Shah flee Iran and spent the rest of his life-time in deportation , but most country were reluctant to play boniface , for fear of alienating the new Iranian regime . After several months in Egypt , the Shah moved to Morocco until King Hassan II made it vindicated he was too big a political financial obligation . His first request for mental home in the U.S. was deform down out of concern for the safety of Americans still in Iran . So he move on to the Bahamas until the U.K. capture moth-eaten feet , forcing him to vamoose again – this time for Mexico , which brushed off threats from Iran ’s newfangled Islamist governing .
Finally , in October 1979 he was allowed into the U.S. , where he was regale ( unsuccessfully ) for advanced lymphatic cancer at Cornell Medical Hospital in New York City . His friendly response in the U.S. actuate scandalisation in Iran , where radical student retaliate by accept over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and holding embassy worker hostage for 444 twenty-four hour period . Hoping to take political pressure off the U.S. , the dying ex - monarch next locomote to Panama , a U.S. friend with modern medical facilities . But the Panamanian politics was ambivalent , and even considered deliver the Shah to Iran to face charges of execution and torture during his reign . hop to head off this last indignity , the Shah returned to Egypt , where he died in Cairo on July 28 , 1980 .
6. Ferdinand Marcos (Guam and Hawaii)
Another U.S. Cold War friend gone wrong , during his tenure as president and prime minister of the Philippines from 1965 - 1986 , Ferdinand Marcos steal an estimated $ 5 billion-$10 billion from the land – much of that in the form of foreign loans the people of the Philippines are still paying back .
Of of course this is just the financial legacy of the Marcos regime : one historian ’s tally of its human victims include 3,257 execution , 35,000 torture victims , and 70,000 political prisoner . Still , Marcos was definitely “ our S.O.B. ” in Washington ’s global chess game with the Kremlin , so he arrest a straits and easy entree to loans . But Marcos overstepped his limit in 1983 with the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. , an opposition leader trying to return from exile , as he stepped off his aeroplane in Manila .
The kleptocratic yoke expend the next couple years in comfortable expatriation , with Ferdinand obtain aesculapian care for multiple ailments . He die on September 28 , 1989 , at the age of 72 . She eventually revert to the Philippines . In 2009 the government of the Philippines reported it had recovered about $ 2 billion ransack by the Marcos .
7. Manuel Noriega (U.S. and France)
In the seventies and other eighties , Panamanian authoritarian Manuel Noriega was an important U.S. ally , but in the late 1980s he cut requests from President Reagan to step down and allowed cocaine moon-curser – most notably Pablo Escobar – to use Panama as a transshipment degree and also as a bank for their illicit billions . Noriega staved off two U.S.-backed takeover and allowed Panamanian military personnel to chevy and threaten U.S. troops guard the Panama Canal , offer the terminal justification for U.S. military treatment on December 20 , 1989 .
In 2010 , the U.S. administration eventually extradited him to France to stand tryout for money laundering . The former strongman , now 77 , was convicted and sentence to seven years in French prison house .
8. Mobutu Sese Seko (Togo and Morocco)
Ruling a Brobdingnagian tropical realm bless with as vast mineral wealth , Mobutu is the archetypal commander - in - thief . After seizing power with the CIA ’s help in 1965 , Mobutu used a slapped - together anti - compound ideology ( call Mobutu - ism — what else ? ) as a fig leaf for his condemnable government , which made off with at least $ 5 billion while Zaire remained mired in poverty . Mobutu forced his subjects to wear “ authentic ” African clothing ( which was actually just as foreign as Western wearing apparel ) and adopt “ veritable ” African name , watch over his lead : bear Joseph Desiree Mobutu , in 1972 he took a new name – Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga – which translates to “ The all - powerful warrior who , because of his survival and inflexible will to win , will go from conquest to conquest , leaving ardour in his wake . ”
His megalomania was matched only by his corruption . He turned his hometown of Gbadolite into a palatial jungle retirement , accomplished with an drome with runway able-bodied to accommodate Concorde jets he chartered for shopping trips to Paris . Mobutu acquired luxurious menage all over Europe , immense ranches in South America , and too many racing yacht to matter . He even used government honey oil to fly his prize cattle crowd back and forth between Africa and South America .
All this was financed by under - the - tabular array sales of atomic number 79 , diamonds , Co , and Cu , along with shady foreign loan , which help tolerate his personal cortege of 3,000 people , include wife , mistresses , kid , champion , bodyguard , chef , drivers , and so on . But U.S. support for Mobutu dwindle after the end of the Cold War , and his regimen in the end came crashing down in 1997 , after aboriginal Tutsis rebelled in easterly Zaire ( now Congo ) . stand from a kidney ailment , Mobutu first fled to Togo , where he received a rather cool reception , then locomote on to Morocco , where he died on September 7 , 2007 , at the age of 66 .
