List of Famous people who died in 2004

Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, also spelled Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, was a Yemeni Zaidi religious, political and military leader, as well as former member of the Yemeni parliament for the Al-Haqq party between 1993 and 1997. He was instrumental in the Houthi insurgency against the Yemeni government, which began in 2004. Al-Houthi, who was a one-time rising political aspirant in Yemen, had wide religious and tribal backing in northern Yemen's mountainous regions. The Houthi movement took his name after his assassination in 2004.

Joseph R. Beyrle is thought to be the only American soldier to have served with both the United States Army and the Soviet Red Army in World War II. He took part in Mission Albany, the airborne landings of the 101st Airborne Division on June 5–6, 1944, as a member of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was captured by the Germans and sent east as a prisoner of war.

Aleksei Barkalov was a Ukrainian water polo player who competed in the 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980 Summer Olympics and won two gold and one silver medals for the Soviet Union team. During his career, he played 412 games for the national team, more than any other athlete in the water polo history. In 1993, he was inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Jacques Benveniste was a French immunologist born in Paris. In 1979, he published a well-known paper on the structure of platelet-activating factor and its relationship with histamine. He was head of allergy and inflammation immunology at the French biomedical research agency INSERM.

André Castelot, born André Storms, was a French writer and scriptwriter born in Belgium. He was the son of the Symbolist painter Maurice Chabas and Gabrielle Storms-Castelot, and the brother of the film actor Jacques Castelot. He wrote more than one hundred books, mostly biographies of famous people.

Ritsuko Okazaki was a Japanese singer-songwriter born on Hashima Island, Nagasaki Prefecture. She first made her professional debut with the single, Kanashii Jiyū / Koi ga, Kiete Yuku. She is also known as the Shelby Flint of Japan.

Hitoshi Takagi was a Japanese voice actor. He died at the age of 78 due to partial ischemic heart disease.

Shirley Barbara de la Hunty AO, MBE, known as Shirley Strickland during her early career, was an Australian athlete. She won more Olympic medals than any other Australian in running sports.

Rogério Sganzerla was a Brazilian filmmaker. One of the main names of the cinema marginal underground movement, his most known work is The Red Light Bandit (1968). Sganzerla was influenced by Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, and José Mojica Marins, and often used clichés from film noir and pornochanchadas. Irony, narrative subversion and collage were trademarks of his film aesthetics.

Werner Schumacher was a German actor. From 1971 until 1986 he starred in the Süddeutscher Rundfunk version of the popular television crime series Tatort.