Editor's Letter: The fate of ex-tyrants

last updated 8 January 2015

Tyrants enjoy a very comfortable life, but it’s not much fun anymore being a former tyrant. I suspect Hosni Mubarak would testify to that, now that authorities in Egypt and elsewhere are tracking down the billions he and his family plundered. Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali? He suffered a stroke after the shock of losing power, and is now in a coma in a Saudi hospital. Soon, Muammar al-Qaddafi will taste his own disgrace—if he survives the civil war he’s launched to stave off the inevitable. I once encountered a dictator from this mold—Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, whom I interviewed in his Belgrade office in 1992. Smoking his cigarillos, contemptuous of criticism, Milosevic blamed the violence in neighboring Bosnia on “vested interests” aided by the media. “I’m proud to be blamed for loyalty to my country,” Milosevic said, sure that he’d never have to answer for his actions. Idi Amin, after all, was living well on a Saudi stipend, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier was ensconced in his villa in Cannes, and Pol Pot was growing old along the Thai border after exterminating 1.7 million Cambodians.

Eight years later, Milosevic found himself, to his shock, on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity. He died in prison in 2006 before a verdict could be rendered. But his outrages had moved the world’s powers to set up the international courts that today’s tyrants have to take into account. Qaddafi may receive justice at the hands of his people, or he may get it from an international court. Either way, he won’t live out his life in a villa in the South of France.