Who: Born Saloth Sar, Pol Pot was the ruler of the Khmer Rouge government and the Cambodian prime minister from 1976 to 1979. He captured power by militarily overthrowing the US-backed Cambodian government, and embarked on his journey to take the country back to the Dark Ages.

His forcible relocation of people to the villages and extermination of anyone believed to be an intellectual or a 'bourgeois' is blamed for about 2 million deaths.

How he died: In 1979, he led Cambodia into a disastrous war with Vietnam which led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge government. Since then, Pol Pot lived in the jungles of Cambodia, till he was tried for reason by the very Khmer Rouge he led. His death still remains a mystery, but it is believed he died of a heart attack.

Images: Right: Pol Pot
Left: Cambodian Sam Vishna looks at a mixture of brown and white skulls that make up a map of Cambodia at the Tuol Sleng museum, the former high school turned prison by the Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot regime where more than 17,000 men, women and children were held before taken to the killing fields to be executed.

Photograph: Prasit Sangrungrueng/AFP/Getty Images and Rob Elliot/AFP/Getty Images
Earlier Slide Show: The king who speaks Sanskrit

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