PARIS - Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran president who was expelled from his country at gunpoint in a June 28 coup, has been in refuge in the Brazilian embassy since Monday after his clandestine return to Honduras.

Here are several previous cases of personalities who took refuge, sometimes for several years, in foreign embassies.

- During the 1956 uprising in Hungary, Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest, after the Soviet Union intervened. He only left the embassy in 1971, when he went to Vienna.

- In December 1989, as the US military invaded Panama, military dictator Manuel Noriega took refuge in the papal nunciature in Panama City for two weeks before surrendering.

He was given a 17-year prison sentence in the United States for drugs trafficking and money laundering.

- In October 1990, Lebanese general Michel Aoun, head of a disputed Christian government, was expelled from the presidential palace in a Syrian-Lebanese offensive.

He took refuge for 10 months in France's embassy in Beirut before being forced to take exile in France, where he stayed for 15 years.

- In July 1996, the president of Burundi, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a Hutu, took refuge in the residence of the US ambassador in Bujumbura, three days before being overthrown by the majority Tutsi army in a coup d'etat. He left the embassy in June 1997.

- In January, 1999, the head of Kurdish rebels in Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan, took refuge in the Greek embassy in Nairobi.

On February 15 he was arrested on the way to Nairobi airport by Turkish agents. Put on trial in Turkey, he was condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison after the abolition of the death penalty.

- In September 2002, during a military uprising in Ivory Coast, the former prime minister and main opponent of president Laurent Gbagbo, Alassane Ouattara, took refuge in the residence of the French and German ambassadors in Abidjan.

In late November he left the country for Gabon, before going on to France.

- In June 2008, the head of the Zimbabwean opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, took refuge for a week in the Dutch embassy in Harare, after having given up taking part in the second round of presidential elections due to violence against his supporters.