Kim Sengupta: What becomes of the autocrats as their time runs out?

Ben Ali and his wife are said to be resident in the same area of Saudi Arabia as another fallen African potentate, Idi Amin

The path of strongmen forced from power is a bitter and lonely one tinged with the fear that the desire for vengeance created by the brutalities of their past will eventually catch up with them, a fate that Honsi Mubarak still thinks he can avoid.

Client rulers of the West know to their cost that gratitude for services rendered is in short supply. The first one to be toppled in the sweep of unrest through the Middle East, the Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was refused entry into France, for long his sponsor, and had to seek refuge in Saudi Arabia, the last resting place for a number of Muslim totalitarian leaders.

Ben Ali, and his wife Leila Trabelsi, are now said to be residents of a villa in the same neighbourhood as another fallen African potentate, Idi Amin, who died of multiple organ failure after being driven away from his murderous regime in Uganda. It was always unclear where Hosni Mubarak would have ended up had he been forced out of Egypt yesterday. Thanks to his predecessor Anwar Sadat, and then Mubarak, America was able to broker almost 30 years of relative peace with Israel and observers in the US say that the Obama administration would have worked hard to let him see out his days in a semblance of dignity.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, present as Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, saw Sadat sign the peace treaty with Menachem Begin and believes that Mubarak's rule was "a good deal for the US and for Egypt. Historic change outpaced the moderniser Mubarak as often occurs."

But Egypt was the place where another great ally of the US, the Shah of Iran, ended up for his death after the US administration made it clear he was unwelcome. President Carter had reluctantly allowed him in to receive medical treatment in New York after a plea from David Rockefeller. He was subsequently asked to leave the US and, after a brief sojourn in Panama, he ended up in Cairo where he died in 1980, aged 60, and is buried at the City's Al-Rifa'i mosque.

Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, driven out after widespread protest five years after George H W Bush, then vice-president, declared: "We love your adherence to democratic principles and the democratic process" was barred from mainland US but allowed into Hawaii.

Some African states have been more accommodating to neighbouring despots. Hissene Habre, the former dictator of Chad, accused of thousands of extra-judicial killings and torture in his eight-year reign enjoys a comfortable lifestyle in Senegal, while Ethiopia's former leader Mengistu Haile Mariam has found a kindred spirit, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Charles Taylor of Liberia, the man blamed for widespread abuse in his own country and inciting the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone to loot the country's diamond mines was not so lucky. Pressurised by the US, the Nigerian government engineered his removal back to Liberia where he was arrested and eventually sent to The Hague to stand trial for alleged war crimes committed in Sierra Leone.

Other leaders forced into exile have been the authors of their own misfortune in the belief their transgressions had been forgotten. Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier recently returned to Haiti, suffering the aftermath of the shattering earthquake and political strife, professing he would bring "De Gaulle" type salvation to his stricken country. He was immediately arrested and charged with corruption and theft and, freed on a version of bail, faces trial.