Former Czech president, hero of the Velvet Revolution that toppled communism in his country in 1989, died on Sunday at the age of 75, his office said. Havel, who served as head of state from 1989 to 2003, died in his sleep at dawn after a lengthy illness, his spokeswoman Sabina Tancevova said. Havel personified the Velvet Revolution which peacefully toppled Czechoslovakia’s communist regime in December 1989. He was seen as someone who had led his fellow citizens without pain to a beautiful victory over an incomparably stronger apparatus of power.
