Ali Ahmed Nasser Antar

South Yemen state institutions Marxism–Leninism 1937–1986 ✕ Shot dead

Vice president who twice remade the leadership, killed by a comrade's guards

On the morning before the meeting, he told Lebanese Communist leader George Hawi, "Today we intend to make specific proposals, and if Ali Nasir rejects them, I'll pull out my gun and shoot myself."

A guerrilla of the National Liberation Front who became a soldier and politician, serving as minister of defense and vice president of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. He reorganized the army along Soviet lines and led the 1978 ouster of Salim Rubai Ali and the 1980 removal of Abd al-Fattah Ismail, reaching the core of power. He later opposed Ali Nasir Muhammad's economic liberalization and became a center of the opposition until, shot dead by presidential guards at the Politburo meeting of January 13, 1986, his killing prompted the officer corps to desert the president and ignited the South Yemen civil war.