The lavish lives of the dictators' wives
Safia Gaddafi
The widow of Libyan tyrant Colonel Gaddafi tried to portray herself as a simple wife and mother to seven of his eight children.
The former nurse, 60, once said of him: "If I thought he was a terrorist I would not stay with him and have children with him. He is a human being."
In reality, she is enormously wealthy, with a personal fortune of more than £20billion.
Safia, who fled across the Algerian border with her daughter Aisha, owned her own airline company and was said to have a stash of 20 tons of gold.
Asma al-Assad
What is a girl to do while her dictator hubby is off enforcing his brutal, oppressive regime? Why, she goes shopping, of course.
Leaked emails show that Asma al-Assad, 36, was buying chandeliers as her other half, President Bashar al-Assad, was busy butchering Syrian rebels.
London-born Asma used a fake American address to go online shopping. She bought music and apps from iTunes, splashed out more than £10,000 on tables and other furniture from Paris and even got a fondue set from Amazon.
Fond of the posh shops, she does have an eye for a bargain too, emailing her London fixer to buy a £2,650 vase and adding: “Pls can Abdulla see if this is available at Harrods to order – they have a sale at the moment."
The reply came back: "He bought it. Got 15% discount. Delivery 10 weeks."
Details of Asma’s sprees were among thousands of emails received and sent by her and Assad and intercepted by the rebels between last June and February.
The Arab Spring uprising has revealed a new generation of “Lady Macbeth” figures, standing by their despot men in the face of international condemnation.
Here are some other dictators’ wives whose love of designer dresses often hid a heart as steely as their husbands...
Leila Trabelsi
The former hairdresser, 53, extorted cash from shop owners and had a £3.5billion stake in the nation’s businesses.
She ritually sacrificed chameleons to cast spells over her husband and once punished a chef by putting his hands into boiling oil.
Leila fled to Saudi Arabia to join her deposed husband, allegedly taking £37.5million of gold from Tunisia’s main bank.
Suzanne Mubarak
The wife of Egypt’s “Last Pharaoh” Hosni Mubarak and the daughter of a nurse from Pontypridd, South Wales.
The 71-year-old had a fortune of more than £3million and also benefited from her husband’s £26billion stash while 40% of Egyptians were living on less than £1.20 per day.
She is now being probed for crimes against the state. Tried to portray herself as a feminist when real ­campaigners were being raped and tortured.
Sarah Amin
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin married his fifth wife Sarah in 1975 in a £2million ceremony.
She fled with him to Libya when he was toppled in 1979, but by 1982 "Suicide Sarah" had left him to seek asylum in Germany, where she worked as a lingerie model.
In 1999 she was fined for running a ­cockroach-infested cafe in London.
Now 55, she is thought to be an events ­organiser in Tottenham, North London.
Simone Gbagbo
She was once known as the "Hillary Clinton of the tropics" – but her opponents preferred to call her the "Iron Lady" or "Blood Lady".
When her husband, former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, came to power in 2000, Simone made it clear he was not the only one holding the reins and appointed her own relatives and friends to government posts.
Now 61, she has reportedly been investigated by the UN for human rights abuses, including organising death squads.
Michele Duvalier
New York secretary Michele Bennett married Haiti’s President Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in 1980 in a ceremony that cost more than £2million.
The Duvalier regime terrorised its people and siphoned millions into European bank accounts.
The
couple fled with £300million for a luxury ­lifestyle on the French
Riviera, complete with a Ferrari and multiple properties.
They split in 1990 and ­Duvalier lost much of his fortune in a divorce payout.
Mirjana Markovic
After her husband’s arrest, the sociology professor, 69, fled to Russia, but Serbian officials issued a warrant for her arrest for ordering the murder of a journalist.
Now in exile in France, she is also accused of making millions through cigarette smuggling.
She had a taste for caviar and would fly her own plastic surgeon in from Italy.
