List of Famous people who died in 2003

Zahra "Ziba" Kazemi-Ahmadabadi was an Iranian-Canadian freelance photographer, who according to the medical examiner was raped, tortured and killed by Iranian officials following her arrest in Iran.

Pieter "Piet" Dankert was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA).

Isser Harel was spymaster of the intelligence and the security services of Israel and the Director of the Mossad (1952–1963). In his capacity as Mossad director he oversaw the capture and covert transportation to Israel of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann.

Ellen Drew was an American film actress.

Martin Schenkel was a Swiss television actor and musician starring usually in Swiss German television productions.

Carlos Apolinar Lemos Simmonds was the sixth Vice President of Colombia.

Rebeca Ghigliotto was a Chilean actress of stage plays and television series, or telenovelas. She had three daughters with director Raúl Osorio: Camila, Javiera, and Luciana Osorio Ghigliotto. Ghigliotto died of lung cancer.

Kurt Karl Stephan Semm was a German gynecologist and pioneer in minimally invasive surgery. He has been called "the father of modern laparoscopy".

Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov was a Soviet official who became a Russian banker following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Born in the city of Moscow, then part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Pavlov began his political career in the Ministry of Finance in 1959. Later, during the Brezhnev Era, he became head of the Financial Department of the State Planning Committee. Pavlov was appointed to the post of Chairman of the State Committee on Prices during the Gorbachev Era, and later became Minister of Finance in Nikolai Ryzhkov's second government. He went on to succeed Ryzhkov as head of government in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.

Paul Jennings Hill was an American minister and anti-abortion extremist who murdered physician John Britton and Britton's bodyguard, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James Barrett, in 1994. Hill was sentenced to death by lethal injection and was executed on September 3, 2003.