Mali’s former president Amadou Toumani Touré, has died in Turkey aged 72 according to his chief of staff Seydou Cissouma, providing no further details.
A former army general, Touré who led the Sahel nation for 10 years before being ousted in a coup, won acclaim for pursuing democratic reforms when he helped topple the country’s longtime military ruler Moussa Traoré.
Touré’s life, in many ways, symbolised the stop-start nature of democracy in Mali, where his successor Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was overthrown in another coup this August.
Widely known by his initials ATT, Touré led an army coup in 1991 against Moussa Traoré after violent anti-government protests.
He organised democratic elections the following year and handed over power to a civilian president, earning him the nickname of “Soldier of Democracy”.
Touré returned to the presidency in 2002, winning election with 65% of the vote, and was re-elected to a final five-year term in 2007. Touré was planning to step down when his second term expired in 2012.
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