- Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf (born August 11 , 1943 , Delhi , India ) became ruler (head of state/chief executive) of Pakistan on October 12 , 1999 following a bloodless coup d'AAtat . He assumed the office of President of Pakistan on June 20 , 2001 . In order to legitimize and legalize his rule, he held a referendum on April 30 , 2002 thereby elected as President of Pakistan for duration of five years.
- Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Former President of Haiti (1991),(1994-1996) and (2001-2004), ousted in two coups d'état (1991,2004). The American government ruled that the years of military government between 1991 and 1994 would count as part of his term, forcing him to step down after only two years as he was not permitted to run for a second consecutive term. His second term was also interrupted by a putsch and he was forced into exile by the American military. When he could not run, René Préval was elected...
- Francisco Franco
General Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde (4 December 1892-20 November 1975), commonly abbreviated to Francisco Franco or Francisco Franco Bahamonde, and also known as "Caudillo" or "Generalísimo", was the leader and later formal head of state of Spain from October 1936, and of all of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. Franco led a successful military career and reached the rank of General.
- Thomas Sankara
Captain Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was the leader of Burkina Faso (formerly known as Upper Volta) from 1983 to 1987. With a potent combination of personal charisma and a social organization with some participatory democracy, his government undertook major initiatives to fight corruption and improve education, agriculture, and the status of women.
- Simon Mann
Simon Mann (B. 26 June 1952) is a security expert, mercenary and former British Army officer, and South African citizen presently facing extradition to Equatorial Guinea, against which he is accused of leading a failed coup d'etat. Once extradited and convicted, he is likely to serve a minimum 30 year prison sentence at Black Beach prison.
- Guy Philippe
Guy Philippe was a rebel leader in Haïti during the 2004 Haïti rebellion. He was the police chief of Haïti's second-largest city, Cap-Haïtien, until October 2000, when he was accused of organizing a coup attempt. Philippe fled to the Dominican Republic, where he remained until a rebellion against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide began in February 2004. On February 14, he crossed the border back into Haïti and announced, …
- Ely Ould Mohamed Vall
Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall was the military leader of Mauritania from a coup d'état in August 2005 until 19 April 2007, when he relinquished power to an elected government. Vall was a long-time ally of President Maaouya Ould Taya, and participated in the December 1984 coup that brought Taya to power. Prior to the 2005 coup, he had been director of the national police force, the "Sûreté Nationale", since 1987.
- Ne Win
Bo Ne Win was a Burmese military commander and dictator of Burma from 1962 until 1988. Ne Win was appointed Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) on 31 January 1949. He then became head of the caretaker government between 28 October 1958 and 4 April 1960. He appointed himself Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government after staging a coup d'etat on 2 March 1962 till 2 March 1974, …
- Sonthi Boonyaratglin
General Sonthi Boonyaratglin (b. 2 October 1946) is Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army and head of the Council for National Security, the military junta that rules the kingdom. He is the first Muslim in charge of the mostly Buddhist army. On 19 September 2006, he became the de facto head of government of Thailand after overthrowing the elected government in a coup d'état.
- Gnassingbé Eyadéma
General Gnassingbé Eyadéma, formerly Étienne Eyadéma, was the President of Togo from 1967 until his death. He participated in two successful military coups, in January 1963 and January 1967, and became President on April 14, 1967. He managed to remain in power for the next 38 years.
- Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntington (born April 18, 1927) is a controversial US political scientist known for his analysis of the relationship between the military and the civil government, his investigation of "coups d'etat", his thesis (inspired by Polish scientist Feliks Koneczny) that the central political actors of the 21st century will be civilizations rather than nation-states and, most recently, for his views on US immigration.
- Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (30 August 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a lieutenant-colonel in the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation and later a Russian dissident and writer. A son of a physician, Litvinenko was schooled in Nalchik, before being drafted into the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a private. After graduating in 1985 from the Kirov Higher Command School, he became a platoon commander in an Internal Troops regiment.
- Abu Bakr
Abū Bakr was a senior companion of and the first Muslim ruler after Muhammad (632–634). Sunnis regard him as his rightful successor ("caliph") and the first of four righteous Caliphs ("Rashidun"). The Shi'a believe he violated Muhammad's direct orders and orchestrated a coup d'état. Scholarly consensus lists him as the first Muslim Caliph.
- Moktar Ould Daddah
Moktar Ould Daddah was the President of Mauritania from 1960, when his country gained its independence from France, to 1978, when he was deposed in a military coup d'etat.
- Sylvanus Olympio
Sylvanus Epiphanio Olympio (6 September 1902 - 13 January 1963) was a Togolese political figure. He served as the Prime Minister of Togo from 1958 to 1961 when he held elections to consolidate his power. He then served as the first President of Togo between 1961 and 1963 where he became the first president and prime minister of Togo for his first year in office, obtaining the seats in an election that barred Nicolas Grunitzky's party.
- Smedley Butler
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 - June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Butler was awarded the brevet medal (the highest Marine medal at its time), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice during his career, one of only 19 people to be awarded the MOH medal twice.
- Pierre Buyoya
Major Pierre Buyoya is a Burundi politician who has ruled Burundi twice, from 1987 to 1993 and from 1996 to 2003. In September of 1987, Buyoya led a military coup against the Second Republic of Burundi, led by Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, and installed himself as the first president of the Third Republic. He proclaimed an agenda of liberalization and patching relations between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, but presided over an oppressive ruling junta consisting primarily of Tutsi.
- Gérard Latortue
Gérard Latortue was the Prime Minister of Haïti from March 12 2004 to June 9 2006. He was an official in the United Nations for many years, and briefly served as foreign minister of Haïti during the short-lived 1988 administration of Leslie Manigat.
- Seydou Diarra
Seydou Elimane Diarra is a former Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire. He was prime minister from May to October of 2000 while Robert Guéï, who seized power in a December 1999 coup, was president. He was again appointed Prime Minister in February 2003 as part of a deal to end the country's 2002-2003 civil war, because he is considered by some to be a neutral figure; however, …
- Jerry Rawlings
Flight Lieutenant (Retired) Jerry John Rawlings was twice the head of state of Ghana. He first appeared on the Ghanaian political scene on May 15, 1979 when an unsuccessful coup d'état he led resulted in his arrest, imprisonment, and a death sentence. But before he could be executed, his friends in the Ghana military led by Major Boakye Djan overthrew the then military government of General Fred Akuffo in a bloody coup on June 4, 1979.
- André Kolingba
André-Dieudonné Kolingba was the fourth president of the Central African Republic (CAR), from 1 September 1981 until 1 October 1993. He took power from President David Dacko in a bloodless coup d'état in 1981 and lost power to Ange-Félix Patassé in a democratic election held in 1993. Kolingba retained the strong support of France until the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which both internal and external pressure forced him to hold presidential elections which he lost.
- Kenan Evren
Kenan Evren, is a former Turkish general, the leader of the coup d'etat on 12 September 1980 and the 7th president of Turkey.
- Bülent Ecevit
Mustafa Bülent Ecevit was a Turkish politician, poet, writer and journalist.
- Marien Ngouabi
Marien Ngouabi (or N'Gouabi was the military President of the Republic of the Congo from January 1, 1969 – March 18, 1977. As a captain, he and other officers had overthrown the government of Alphonse Massamba-Débat in 1968 as part of a leftist coup d'etat. After a period under the National Revolutionary Council with Ngouabi as chairman and Alfred Raoul as acting head of state, Ngouabi assumed the presidency on December 31, 1968.
- Raoul Cédras
Raoul Cédras, is a former Haitian military officer, and leader of the military junta in 1991–1994. Cédras was a Lieutenant General in the Haitian army who ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994 after a coup d'etat which ousted elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Some human rights groups criticized Cedras' rule alleging that thousands of innocent people were massacred by the FAdH military and FRAPH paramilitary units. The United States called him a "warlord" and a "thug".
- João Goulart
João Belchior Marques Goulart was the last left-wing president of Brazil (1961-March 31, 1964) before the military dictatorship. The surname Goulart is of Azorean-Flemish origin. A former "estancieiro" (farmer with huge properties of land), Goulart (nicknamed "Jango") studied law in Porto Alegre. He was elected to the Rio Grande do Sul state legislature in 1946 with the Brazilian Labor Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro, PTB).
- Muhammad Zia-Ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (b. August 12 1924-August 17 1988) was the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan from July 1977 to August 1988. Appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976, General Zia-ul-Haq came to power after he overthrew ruling Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in a bloodless (save the execution of Bhutto) military coup d'état on July 5, 1977 and became the state's third ruler to impose martial law.
- Nick du Toit
Nick du Toit is an Afrikaner arms dealer and former officer of 32 Battalion [and the 5th Reconnaissance Commando]. He was implicated in the plot to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. He went on trial in Malabo along with 18 other men accused of being the advance party for 70 other suspected mercenaries.
- Jules Favre
Jules Claude Gabriel Favre was a French statesman. He was born in Lyon, and began his career as an advocate. From the time of the revolution of 1830, he openly declared himself a republican, and in political trials he took the opportunity to express this opinion. After the revolution of 1848 he was elected deputy for Lyon to the Constituent Assembly, where he sat among the moderate republicans, voting against the socialists.
- Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo was the "de facto" President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón. After the return to democracy, he was prosecuted for large-scale human rights abuses, including widespread torture and extrajudicial murder of suspected and actual leftists under his rule. He is now under house arrest.
- Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán
Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán was president of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954, when he was ousted in a coup d'état organized by the US Central Intelligence Agency, known as Operation PBSUCCESS, and was replaced by a military junta, headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, plunging the country into chaos and long-lasting political turbulence.
- Józef Piłsudski
Józef Klemens Piłsudski, was a Polish revolutionary and statesman, Field Marshal, first Chief of State (1918-1922) and dictator (1926-1935) of the Second Polish Republic, as well as head of its armed forces. From the middle of World War I until his death, Piłsudski was the major influence on Poland's government and foreign policy, and an important figure in European politics. He is considered largely responsible for Poland having regained her independence in 1918, …
- Mahamane Ousmane
Mahamane Ousmane (born 20 January 1950) is a Nigerien political figure. He was the first democratically elected president of Niger, serving from 16 April 1993 until his ouster in a military coup d'état on 27 January 1996. He has continued to run for president in each election since his ouster, and he has been president of the country's National Assembly since December 1999. He is also the head of the Democratic and Social Convention-Rahama (CDS) party.
- Sheikh Hasina
Sheikh Hasina Wazed (born September 28, 1947) was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001. She has been the President of the Awami League, a major political party in Bangladesh, since 1981. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the nationalist leader and the first president of Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina's political career started as a student activist in Eden College in 1960's.
- Ariel Dorfman
Ariel Dorfman (born May 6 1942 Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. Dorfman, who is Jewish, was born in Argentina but his family moved to the United States shortly after his birth, and then moved to Chile in 1954. He attended and was later a professor at the University of Chile and adopted Chilean Citizenship in 1967. From 1970 to 1973, Dorfman was part of the administration of president Salvador Allende.
- Antonio Tejero
Antonio Tejero Molina was a Spanish Lieutenant-Colonel, and the most visible figure in the attempted coup d'état - also known as the 'Tejerazo' - against the Spanish democracy on 23 February 1981. He entered the Guardia Civil in 1951 and was the leader of the "Comandancia" in Guipuscoa, but had to ask to be transferred to another region when his public declarations against the Ikurriña was known.
- Ziaur Rahman
Ziaur Rahman (January 19 1936 - May 30 1981) was the President of Bangladesh and the founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Popularly called Zia, he is also sometimes referred to as a Shaheed ("Martyr"). His widow Begum Khaleda Zia has served as Prime Minister of Bangladesh three times.
- John Laughland
John Laughland is a British eurosceptic conservative journalist, academic and author who writes on international affairs and political philosophy. He has taken a number of controversial positions, such as when he criticised Western support for the Serbian opposition to Slobodan Milošević, and when he condemned the November 2003 revolution in Georgia as a "coup d'état". Laughland has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford, …
- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was the recipient of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. He is noted for leading protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas and for alleging that the Argentinan police are forming children into paramilitary squads, an operation he compares to the creation of Nazi Germany's Hitler Youth. Pérez Esquivel attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata where he was trained as an architect and sculptor.
- Victoriano Huerta
José Victoriano Huerta Márquez (Colotlán, Jalisco, December 23, 1850, - January 13, 1916 in El Paso, Texas) was a Mexican military officer and president of Mexico. Huerta was born in the town of Colotlán, Jalisco, son of Jesús Huerta and Refugio Márquez who were of Mestizo descent. He entered the Mexican Army at the age of 17, distinguished himself and gained admission to the Military Academy at Chapultepec.