Jean-Bédel Bokassa seized power in a military coup on January 1, 1966. His rule was marked by severe autocracy, violent repression, and immense eccentricity. Most famously, he renamed the country the Central African Empire and staged a lavish, multi-million dollar coronation in 1977 to crown himself Emperor Bokassa I, patterned closely after Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1979, Bokassa’s imperial guard arrested and massacred over 100 schoolchildren who were protesting a mandatory decree forcing them to buy expensive school uniforms manufactured by one of the emperor’s factories.
Following the international outrage over the massacre, French paratroopers carried out a swift military coup in September 1979. They deposed Bokassa while he was out of the country, restored the republic, and reinstated David Dacko as president.
Bokassa went into exile in Côte d’Ivoire and France. In 1986, he unexpectedly returned to the CAR, where he was immediately arrested.
He was put on trial for various charges, including treason, murder, and embezzlement. While acquitted of widely rumored charges of cannibalism, he was convicted of the murder of schoolchildren and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released during an amnesty in 1993. He died of a heart attack in Bangui in 1996.