[ad_1]
Moussa Traore, who led Mali from 1968 until he was overthrown in a 1991 coup, died at his home at age 83 in the capital Bamako on Tuesday, his family said.
“We are really in mourning,” his nephew Mohamed Traore told AFP.
When he was a young lieutenant in 1968, Traore was the main instigator of a coup that toppled Modibo Keita, the country’s first president after independence.
He became president the following year and ruled until he himself was overthrown. In recent years, he had played the role of an elderly statesman whose advice politicians sought.
Traore’s death coincides with another coup, the fourth since independence from France in 1960, after rebel army officers toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on August 18.
Keita, twice elected, still had three years left in his second five-year term in office.
He had faced mounting protests over his inability to stop a bloody eight-year-old jihadist insurgency, cure Mali’s ailing economy and root out corruption.
Talks were taking place in Ghana on Tuesday between the leader of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goita, and the 15-nation West African bloc ECOWAS to determine a timetable for restoring civilian rule.
[AFP]Vanguard News Nigeria.
Related
All rights reserved. This material and any other digital content on this platform may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, written or distributed in whole or in part without the written permission of CUTTING EDGE NEWS.
[ad_2]
