Ali, Salim Rubayi (1934-1978)

President of South Yemen 1969-78. A leading member of the Marxist National Liberation Front, he succeeded Qahtan Muhammad al-Shaabi as president in June 1969, after a power struggle. He was executed after his deposition in 1978.

Ali presided over an Eastern-European-style socialist regime, which developed close links with the USSR, but whose repression caused the departure of large numbers of its people to North Yemen. From 1977, as a result of taking the Soviet and Ethiopian side against the West Somali and Eritrean liberation movements, South Yemen became isolated within the Arab world. Ali responded by seeking rapprochement with the conservative regime in North Yemen. However, this was sabotaged by left-wing extremists, who placed a bomb in a suitcase carried by an envoy in June 1989, resulting in the assassination of the North's president, Ahmed bin Hussein al-Ghashmi. Ali was then swiftly deposed and, after 12 hours of heavy fighting in Aden, executed by a firing squad.