Death, Exile Come With Being a Dictator

Some ended up in prison, others were butchered at the hands of their own people. A lucky few lived out their days in comfortable exile or in positions of privilege in the lands they ruled. India's independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi said dictators "can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall."

That hasn't always proven true. Russia's Josef Stalin, North Korea's Kim Il-Sung, China's Mao Zedong, Spain's Francisco Franco, Albania's Enver Hoxha and Syria's Hafez Assad all died in power. Augusto Pinochet of Chile arranged a comfortable retirement before handing over power. The global record of bringing tyrants to justice has been mixed.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic stood before an international tribunal to answer for his regime, but he died before a verdict could be rendered.

Liberia's Charles Taylor has been indicted for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone and awaits trial.

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega is serving a 40-year term in a federal prison in Miami for racketeering, drug trafficking and money-laundering after U.S. troops entered his country and arrested him in 1989.

But history's master tyrant, Adolf Hitler, escaped retribution by committing suicide in Berlin before Soviet troops could capture him in 1945. ...