List of Famous people who died in 2011

Zdeněk Miler was a Czech animator and illustrator best known for his Mole character and its adventures.

Anna Raymond Massey was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac, a role that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said "could have been written for her".

Guillermo León Sáenz Vargas, more commonly known by his nom de guerre Alfonso Cano, was the commander of the militant group known as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. He succeeded founder Manuel Marulanda in March 2008 and commanded the Marxist rebel group until being killed in action by the Colombian Army.

Walter Bonatti was an Italian mountain climber, explorer and journalist. He was noted for his many climbing achievements, including a solo climb of a new route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in August 1955, the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in 1958 and in 1965 the first solo climb in winter of the North face of the Matterhorn on the mountain's centenary year of its first ascent. Immediately after his extraordinary solo climb on the Matterhorn Bonatti announced his retirement from professional climbing at the age of 35 and after 17 years of climbing activity. He authored many mountaineering books and spent the remainder of his career travelling off the beaten track as a reporter for the Italian magazine Epoca. He died on 13 September 2011 of pancreatic cancer in Rome aged 81, and was survived by his life partner, the actress Rossana Podestà.

Leopold Hawelka was an Austrian coffee house owner. He and his wife, Josefine Hawelka, founded and operated Café Hawelka.

Khairy Shalaby was an Egyptian novelist and writer. He wrote some 70 books, including twenty novels, critical studies, historical tales, plays and short story collections. Khairy is widely regarded as having written novels “of the Egyptian street.”

Samuel Ruiz García was a Mexican Roman Catholic prelate who served as bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, from 1959 until 1999. Ruiz is best known for his role as mediator during the conflict between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a Mexican political party which had held power for over seventy years, and whose policies were often disadvantageous to the indigenous populations of Chiapas. Inspired by Liberation Theology, which swept through the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America after the 1960s, Ruiz's diocese helped some hundreds of thousands of indigenous Maya people in Chiapas who were among Mexico's poorest marginalized communities.

Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell was a British racing driver and Second World War fighter pilot. She was the first known British trans woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Ahmed al-Gaddafi al-Qahsi was the Grandson of uncle of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In 16 April 2006, he married Gaddafi's daughter Ayesha. According to the Gaddafi family, Qahsi, who was a colonel in the Libyan Army, was killed in the 26 July 2011 bombing of the Gaddafi compound during the Libyan Civil War. The couple had three children before the conflict started, one of whom was killed along with one of her brothers in a NATO airstrike and another killed along with her husband in the bombing of Gaddafi's compound. Their fourth child, a girl, was born in Algeria as Ayesha fled there with her brothers Hannibal and Muhammad after the Battle of Tripoli.

Hubert Nyssen was a Belgian-French writer, publisher and founder of the Éditions Actes Sud.