AP Photo/Amr Nabil
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, centre, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, right, and his Yemeni counterpart Ali Abdullah Saleh, centre left, during a group picture with Arab and African leaders during the second Afro-Arab summit in Sirte, Libya, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010.
- With the reported death on Monday of longtime Yemen leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, people are revisiting a 2010 photo.
- It shows how radically the Arab world has changed in less than a decade.
At the time of the photo, each man had been in power for decades and were viewed as autocratic strongmen. Now, just seven years later, following the Arab Spring and various military actions, all of them have been removed from office.
After the reported death on Monday of longtime Yemen leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, many have revisited the 2010 photo to show how radically the Arab world has changed in less than a decade.
From left to right, the four men in the bottom row of the photo are: Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, then-president of Tunisia, Saleh, then-president of Yemen, Moammar Gadhafi, then-leader of Libya, and Hosni Mubarak, then-president of Egypt.
Here's, briefly, what happened to each:
- Ben Ali had ruled Tunisia since 1987, until he was removed from power during the country's revolution in January 2011. He fled to Saudi Arabia and has been living in exile there since.
- Saleh became president of North Yemen in 1978, and became president of Yemen in 1990 following the country's merging with South Yemen. He was removed from office in 2011 and now appears to have been killed by the troops that once fought alongside him.
- Gadhafi seized power in a 1969 coup in Libya, ruling for more than 40 years. He was killed in a 2011 uprising that preceded the country's current civil war.
- Mubarak became Egypt's president in 1981 and ruled until 2011. He was put on trial and served six years in prison before being released earlier this year.