KUALA LUMPUR – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, whose passing in a helicopter crash was announced yesterday, joins the unfortunate list of prominent political figures who have perished in aviation accidents.
These are some of the most notable among them.
It was reported that on February 6 of this year, former Chilean president Sebastian Pinera (in office from 2010-2014, and then 2018-2022), died in a helicopter accident at Lago Ranco, a vacation site 920km south of the capital Santiago.
On April 10, 2010, a Tupolev 154 with 96 people aboard including Polish President Lech Kaczynski and senior political and military figures, crashed while trying to land in thick fog at an airport near Smolensk in western Russia.
There were no survivors. The crash was attributed to bad weather as well as errors by the Polish pilots and Russian air traffic controllers.
On July 30, 2005, John Garang, the former separatist rebel leader who became vice-president of South Sudan after its creation, died when his helicopter crashed in Sudan on a flight back from Uganda.
On February 26, 2004, Macedonia’s President Boris Trajkovski was killed along with eight others when his plane crashed as it prepared to land in thick fog in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar.
On April 6, 1994, a Falcon 50 transporting Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundi counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali by at least one missile.
The attack is considered the spark that unleashed the genocide of Tutsis that left at least 800,000 dead, according to the United Nations.
Pakistan’s President Zia ul-Haq was among the victims of a plane accident on August 17, 1988, near Bahawalpur, in the country’s east.
On October 19, 1986, Mozambique’s first president Samora Machel died when his Tupolev 134 crashed in the north-east of South Africa. – May 21, 2024