Mali’s former president, Amadou Toumani Toure, who steered the Sahel nation to democracy and led it for a decade before being ousted in a coup, has died in Turkey aged 72, a family member and a doctor said on Tuesday. Toure “died during the night of Monday to Tuesday in Turkey,” where he had been taken for health reasons, his nephew Oumar Toure told AFP.
ADVERTISING A doctor in Bamako said the former leader had recently undergone heart surgery in the city’s Luxembourg Hospital, which he had helped to found. Although “everything seemed to be going well”, Toure was later transferred to Turkey for medical reasons, the doctor said. “He took a regular flight to Turkey very recently.
Unfortunately, he died overnight,” the source said. Toure, a former soldier, first took charge of the country for a year in 1991, helping to overthrow the unpopular regime of Moussa Traore, who had been in power since 1968.
He took the helm of a transitional committee after the coup, exercising the duties of head of state and steering the country to elections, won in 1992 by Alpha Oumar Konare — the first democratically-chosen president in Mali’s post-independence history.
Universally known by his initials as ATT, Toure won presidential elections in 2002 and again in 2007.
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