Plane crashes that killed top leaders

On Sunday, a helicopter carrying Iran President Ebrahim Raisi and his Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian crashed in mountains near the Azerbaijan border, leaving both the leaders dead. Vibha Sharma looks at prominent global figures who lost their lives in plane crashes:

YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN

Russian mercenary, who headed Wagner group, a private military company, was killed in an air crash on August 23, 2023, days after his militias participated in an alleged coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. His death was shrouded in mystery. After his death in the crash, media reports quoted US sources, saying the accident was “likely caused by a bomb on board or some other form of sabotage”.

LECH KACZYNSKI

On April, 2010, the President of Poland died in a plane crash near Smolensk, Russia along with many other high-ranking Polish officials. According to reports, the Polish government special commission was convinced that “the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in Russia was the result of Moscow’s assassination plan”.

RASHID KARAMI

Lebanon’s most frequently elected prime minister and a prominent figure during the Lebanese Civil War died when a bomb exploded in his helicopter on June 1, 1987.

ABDUL SALAM ARIF

The second President of Iraq, who played a crucial role in the 1958 revolution, died when his Iraqi Air Force plane crashed near Basra on April 13, 1966.

GENERAL ZIA-UL-HAQ

The powerful president Pakistan, General Zia-Ul-Haq, was killed in an aircraft on August 17, 1988, near Bahawalpur, along with several generals on board as well as then US ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel. The crash remains shrouded in mystery amid speculation about sabotage, including one which involves a case of mangoes pushed into the aircraft which, allegedly, was full of explosives.