A queen, a terrorist and even a drug trafficker: ten more characters who died in 2022

The death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI will perhaps be one of the events that will mark the end of a 2022 that will be remembered for a series of historic events. But this year other important international figures have also said goodbye. who are they?

One would have to go back hundreds of years in history to find a monarch who reigned longer than Queen Elizabeth II, one of the influential people what left this 2022.

The Queen of England’s death was arguably the most high-profile death of the year. But there are also other world leaders who join this list of games along with other characters without much or no glory, but who have nevertheless left their mark.

1. Elizabeth II

His death in September was one of the events of the year. It has provoked a great collective outpouring of grief and respect for his stable leadership, as well as some criticism of the role of the monarchy in colonialism.

Elizabeth II definitely met more people that nobody throughout history, and his image – on stamps, coins and banknotes – was one of the most reproduced in the world.

He was 96 when he died. He reigned for seven decades, unhesitatingly devoting himself to the rituals of his role amid family scandals and epic social and economic upheaval.

The Queen survived the tectonic changes in her country’s post-imperial society and overcame the subsequent challenges posed by her descendants’ romantic decisions, missteps, and shenanigans. died at Balmoral Castle. in Scotland, his summer retreat.

The royal family announced his death online, saying he had passed away peacefully. The announcement did not specify a cause. It became known much later that the queen was suffering from bone cancer. But it has never been confirmed.

His death raised his eldest son, Carlos, to the throne as King Carlos III.

2. Mikhail Gorbachev

Other world leaders who died in 2022 include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who passed away in August. His attempts to revitalize the Soviet Union led to the collapse of the communist regime and ended the Cold War.

Long-term I quit after an attempted coup, at a time when the Soviet republics were declaring their independence from the overthrown USSR.

His death was announced by Russian state news agencies. Reports said he died afterwards an unspecified “long and serious illness”.

Few leaders in the 20th century, indeed any century, have had such a profound effect on their time. In just over six tumultuous years, Gorbachev raised the Iron Curtain, decisively altering the political climate of the world.

At home, he promised and delivered greater openness as he set out to reshape his country’s faltering economy and society. It was not his intention to liquidate the Soviet empire, but within five years of coming to power he had presided over the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

put an end to the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan and, in an extraordinary five months in 1989, stood by as the Communist system imploded from the Baltics to the Balkans in countries already weakened by widespread corruption and moribund economies.

He died at 91 years old.

3. Shinzo Abe

The year also saw the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot dead during an election speech in July.

Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister with more years of servicewhich unsuccessfully set out to restore Japan as a normalized military power, he’s been killed in the city of Nara, Japan. He was 67 years old.

Abe, scion of a family of staunchly nationalist politicians, made history by leading Japan for nearly eight consecutive yearsas of 2012.

It was a remarkable feat of longevity not only because of Japan’s record of quickly turning over prime ministers, but also because Abe himself had only lasted a year in a previous ill-fated stint as the country’s leader.

His long career in office, however, has brought him only partial victories in his two major ambitions: to liberate the Japanese military after decades of postwar pacifism and to jump-start and reform its economy through a program known as abenomics.

And in August 2020, just four days after setting the record for longest uninterrupted run as Japanese leader, Abe he resigned as prime minister due to health problems, one year before the end of his mandate.

4. Ayman al-Zawahiri

The notorious terrorist and successor, after his death, of Osama bin Laden, who also died in July 2022, aged 71. He was killed in a US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian-born surgeon turned jihadist, led a life of secrecy, treachery, conspiracy and violenceas well as a brutal killer for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Although bin Laden, killed in a US operation in Pakistan in 2011, was widely seen as the mastermind behind 9/11, many counterterrorism experts considered him al-Zawahri more responsible.

With his white turban and gray beard, his bruised forehead denoting devotion to frequent prayer, al-Zawahri had little of bin Laden’s charisma and none of his access to the family’s legendary wealth.

But it was widely represented as the intellectual backbone of al Qaeda. He was their director of operations and their public relations executive. His profound influence helped Saudi-born bin Laden transform from a charismatic preacher to a deadly global terrorist.

5. Ivana Trump

Ivana Trump is on this list because she was the first wife of one of the men who got to lead the world’s greatest power for four years: Donald Trump. And also because she was an iconic figure of the 80s.

This skier turned entrepreneur and mother of Trump’s eldest children, she rose to prominence in the upper echelons of society in 1980. She died on July 14 of injuries sustained in an accident. She allegedly fell down her stairs in her Manhattan apartment. She was 73 years old.

Ivan Trump, Czech-American, Along with her then-husband, she became one of the quintessential New York power couples of the 1980s.

Former President Trump himself announced his death in a statement on Truth Social, the conservative social media platform he founded.

Throughout their marriage, Ivana garnered nearly as much media attention as her husband, as they helped define the 1980s as an era of conspicuous excesses among the elitesan image Trump used to present himself as a giant TV personality before his 2016 bid for the White House.

6.David Trimble

Julio also took David Trimble, a former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland who won the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a key role in helping to end decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

He died on July 25 and was 77 years old.

His death was announced by the Ulster Unionist Party, which he led. A statement from the party, on behalf of the Trimble family, did not specify where he died or give a cause, saying only that his death was after “a short illness”.

Trimble shared the award with longtime Catholic opponent John Hume after the two men played major roles in US-brokered talks that led to the so-called Good Friday Agreement in 1998which formally ended three decades of fighting known as The Riots that had claimed more than 3,000 lives.

7. Madeleine Albright

A child refugee from Nazism and then Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, she became Madeleine Albright The first US Secretary of State and a mentor to many current and former American statesmen and women.

died of canceron March 23, at the age of 84.

Shrouded in family secrets that she kept hidden for most of her life, Albright rose to power and fame as a brilliant analyst on world affairs and White House National Security Advisor.

Under President Bill Clinton, she served as the country’s representative to the United Nations (1993-97) and Secretary of State (1997-2001), making her the highest-ranking woman in US government history at the time.

8. Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela

This elderly leader and one of the founders of the former Cali cartel, which smuggled huge quantities of cocaine from Colombia to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, died on May 31 in an American prison.

Behind bars, Orejuela had been serving a 30-year prison sentence in the United States since 2006 for various drug trafficking offenses.

With his brother Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, held in a Pennsylvania prison, and José Santacruz Londoño, they started in the 1970s. the fearsome Cali Cartel.

9. Cardinal Angelo Sodano

This Italian prelate was once the powerful Secretary of State of the Holy See for a long time, but his legacy has been marked by your support for the Legionaries of Christfounded by Father Marcial Maciel, a religious order plagued by a gigantic pedophilia scandal.

He died on May 27, at the age of 94. The Vatican, which reported his death, has never said where or why he died.

Cardinal Sodano served as Secretary of State, the second highest position in the Vatican after the Pope, for 16 years. His mandate covered a large part of the pontificate of John Paul II, who once called him “my first and most precious collaborator”.

As Parkinson’s disease and other ailments weakened John Paul II, Cardinal Sodano, along with the pope’s private secretary, played an important role in running the church.

The cardinal brokered the Balkan wars and strongly opposed the George W. Bush administration’s Iraq war. In 2003 he told reporters: “We ask for a reflection not only on whether a war is just or unjust, moral or immoral, but also on whether it should irritate a billion followers of Islam.”

10.Jian Zemin

Jian Zemin, former Chinese president, brought China out of isolation after the army cracked down on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and supported the economic reforms that led to a decade of explosive growth.

He died on November 30th. He was 96 years old.

A Communist Party announcement broadcast by Chinese state media claimed the cause was leukemia and multiple organ failure.

His death and subsequent memorial services came at a sensitive time in China, where the ruling party was facing a wave of widespread protests against its controls against the Zero-Covid pandemic.

Jiang was president of China for a decade, since 1993. In the eyes of many foreign politicians, he was the talkative and disarming exception to the mold of stiff, no-nonsense Chinese leaders. It was the communist who quoted Lincoln, proclaiming his love of Hollywood movies and songs “Love me tenderly”.

Texts from the Associated Press and the New York Times

ap