Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s autocratic former president who fled to Saudi Arabia in 2011 after a popular uprising, has died aged 83. The revolution that led to his downfall inspired uprisings in neighbouring countries that came to be viewed as the Arab Spring. But while Tunisia managed a steady transition to democracy, with free elections held last Sunday, economically many people are no better off.

Ben Ali became president in November 1987 after Habib Bourguiba, the founder of modern Tunisia and president-for-life, was deemed to be too senile to rule. Bourguiba had appointed Ben Ali prime minister the previous month, and a popular, bloodless palace coup – “The Change” – followed.

The new leader of north Africa’s smallest country, situated between Algeria and Libya, and with a population of now more than 11 million people, was strongly pro-western. He developed ties with the European Union, Tunisia’s main trading partner. Foreign investment, manufacturing and tourism all increased, but unemployment remained high. Despite Ben Ali’s relatively liberal social and economic outlook, progress towards effective multiparty democracy was slow, and human rights abuses were reported, particularly towards Islamic activists.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ben Ali with the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1999. Photograph: Ho/Reuters

Ben Ali was critical of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In 1986, Libya had expelled 30,000 Tunisian workers, and the following year Ben Ali, as interior minister, was believed to have been behind the veto that prevented Libya from joining Tunisia’s friendship treaty with Algeria and Mauritania. However, turning a blind eye to sanctions-busting led to an improvement in Tunisia’s relations with its south-eastern neighbour. Business double standards ran right through Ben Ali’s approach to government, and ultimately led to his downfall.

He was born into a modest family in Hammam Sousse, a coastal town in the north-east, when Tunisia was still a French protectorate. At the Sousse secondary school, he joined the anti-French resistance, working for the regional Neo Destour party. This earned him expulsion and a short prison term.

He then moved to France, where he graduated from the military academy at St Cyr, near Paris, then the artillery school at Châlons-sur-Marne, before continuing his military education in the US. On his return to Tunisia, he joined military intelligence. He served as Tunisia’s military attache in Morocco for three years from 1974, and was then appointed a full general, the highest rank in Tunisia’s 25,000-strong army.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ben Ali, right, with Nicolas Sarkozy at the EU-Mediterranean summit in Paris in 2008. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

In 1980 he went to Poland as ambassador and in 1984 was appointed minister for national security. That year he was credited with crushing the riots over price increases backed by the general union of Tunisian workers. Scores of people were killed. In 1986 he became interior minister.

As president, Ben Ali promised a gradual move towards democracy, and began to usher in a new era of human rights and democratic principles. Tunisians welcomed the change, and the legal reforms of 1987-89 included the release of political prisoners and an end to restrictions on political parties.

The economy was growing at about 5% a year, and health and education reforms were introduced. Ben Ali boosted women’s rights, a process continued later by his second wife, Leïla Trabelsi, a former hairdresser, whom he married in 1992.

However, the president, fluent in French, Arabic and English, betrayed his feelings when he told a French newspaper: “Only order permits the full development of democratic institutions.” By the 1990s, wary of the opposition, in particular Rachid Ghannouchi’s Islamist Ennahda (Awakening) party, which was banned in 1989, he began to suspend political rights, muzzling the media and cracking down on human rights activists. Opponents found themselves in prison.

In the first multicandidate presidential elections, in 1999, Ben Ali won an official majority of 99.44% of the votes. In May 2002 he held a referendum to change the constitution so that he could serve a fourth term. He was re-elected in October 2004, officially taking 94.48% of the vote and his party, the Democratic Constitutional Rally, won 152 seats in the 189-seat parliament.

In November 2009 he was elected to a fifth five-year term, with a vote that dropped just below 90%. He criticised claims that the elections were fraudulent as coming from people “who have forgotten their moral duty of good behaviour and reserve against those who try to harm the motherland ... We shall take the measures provided by the law against such behaviour.”

The unrest gathered momentum in December 2010, after police confiscated the cart from which Muhammad Bouazizi sold fruit and vegetables without a permit, and the despairing graduate set himself on fire and died. This took place within the context of rising prices and a severe economic downturn, and in the subsequent demonstrations around 300 people were killed.

A June 2008 cable from the US embassy in Tunis, published by WikiLeaks, quoted from a report by the anti-corruption group Transparency International: “Whether it is cash, services, land, property ... President Ben Ali’s family is rumoured to covet it and reportedly gets what he wants.” The cables called Ben Ali’s extended family a “quasi-mafia” and said it is considered “the nexus of Tunisian corruption”. They added that “seemingly half of the Tunisian business community” can claim connection with Ben Ali through marriage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters demonstrating in Tunis against Ben Ali in 2011. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

As he approached his downfall, Ben Ali dithered. On 28 December 2010 he called the protesters “extremists and mercenaries” and warned of “firm” punishment, but then tried to appease them by reshuffling his cabinet and promising to create 300,000 extra jobs. Only days before leaving Tunisia, he said that he would not change the constitution, which implied that he planned to remain president until 2014. Then, on 26 January, he fled, first to Malta under Libyan protection and then to Jeddah.

There was a certain irony for a man who had fought against the hijab in Tunisia being given asylum in the world’s most conservative Islamic state. France forbade him from landing on French soil. An Air Tunis pilot who refused to take off from Tunis with five other members of Ben Ali’s family became a national hero. Ben Ali was replaced by Fouad Mebezaa as acting president, and he called Beji Caid Essebsi out of retirement to act as prime minister until elections at the end of the year.

The Swiss government pledged to freeze assets belonging to Ben Ali and his family. Forbes magazine had estimated Ben Ali’s fortune at about $5bn in 2008. After he fled, he was convicted in absentia on various counts of theft and incitement to violence and murder.

In 2014 Essebsi became Tunisia’s first freely elected president. He died in July this year and Mohamed Ennaceur took over as interim president. In the recent election, a supporter of Ben Ali won 4% of the vote.

Ben Ali remained in Saudi Arabia, where he was being treated for prostate cancer. He is survived by his wife, their two daughters and son, and by three daughters from his first marriage.

• Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, politician, born 3 September 1936; died 19 September 2019