Personally unassuming, he ruled the world’s most populous Muslim nation with an iron fist for over three decades, crushing dissent as he raked up power.

His death came more than three weeks after he was admitted to hospital with heart, lung and kidney problems, although he had surprised his doctors by his resilience.

“Father has returned to God,” his eldest daughter, Siti Hariyanti Rukmana, told reporters outside. “We ask that if he had any faults, please forgive them ... may he be absolved of all his mistakes.”

Suharto’s tenure was marked by repression, from the killings of at least half a million communists and their sympathisers after the abortive coup that saw him seize power in 1966, to invading East Timor and quelling separatist movements in Aceh and Papua.

Although he steered this sprawling archipelago nation through an economic boom, making it notably self-sufficient in rice, billions of dollars ended up in the hands of friends and relatives as cronyism and corruption ran riot.

“We could not have expected a leader for Indonesia worse than Suharto. But he was no Pol Pot,” said Asmara Nababan, head of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights here.

Suharto was forced to step down in 1998 as protests surged and blood again spilled onto the streets, but his shadow remained. Efforts to put him on trial for human rights atrocities or corruption fell apart through lack of will or because of his poor health.

Born to a farming family on Java island on June 8, 1921, at a time when Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch, Suharto joined the Royal Netherlands Indies Army, rising to sergeant.

When Japanese forces occupied Indonesia in 1942 he joined a Japanese-backed independence militia and after independence, the nascent armed forces.

Suharto seized power in the violent aftermath of a botched coup blamed on the Indonesian communist party and presided over a bloodshed that saw at least half a million people killed and millions thrown into jail. He banned the party, assumed the presidency in 1968 and set about bringing the country out of its economic doldrums.
Under his rule the nation shifted from dependency on oil and gas exports to focus on exporting manufactured products and textiles.

Economic progress was undermined however by a regime that invested far too much power in Suharto, resulting in cronyism during his rule and a weak state after his fall, according to political analyst Dewi Fortun Anwar.
“On paper all the institutions of the modern state existed, but in reality the state wasn’t based on the rule of law but was in support of the regime.”

Anies Baswedan, the rector of Indonesia’s Paramadina University, said that while Suharto set up the basis for economic development, “on the other hand he completely failed to develop good political foundations for this country to prosper in the long run.”