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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.
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 with an iron fist.
His 22 years at the helm of the West African country were marked by the arrests of opponents, stifled demonstrations, suspicious deaths such as that of former President Keita in detention and accusations of embezzlement of international aid funds.
But he was also known for his diplomatic skills. As president of the then Organization of African Unity (now African Union), he played a key role in the Senegal-Mauritania crisis of 1989 and the conflict between Chad and Libya, as well as in Liberia’s first civil war.
Traore reached a peace agreement in 1990 with Mali’s armed Tuareg rebel groups after making important concessions.
But in 1991, the soldiers he had sent to quell pro-democracy protesters turned on him and overthrew him in a bloody insurrection, which officially resulted in more than 200 deaths and 1,000 injuries.
He was sentenced to death for “political crimes” in 1993 and, together with his wife, for economic crimes in 1999.
The sentences were commuted to life in prison and Traore was pardoned in 2002.
“When you embark on a military career, you prepare yourself for the idea of not dying in your bed,” he said upon hearing his first verdict in 1993.
‘Patriots among us’
In recent years, Traore was increasingly viewed as an elderly statesman, with politicians seeking his advice.
Former Prime Minister Soumeylou Maiga expressed on Twitter his “great dismay” at the death of Traore, in a tribute in which he referred to the “friendship and respect that we have developed in recent years.”
Traore’s death comes just four weeks after another coup, Mali’s fourth since its 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.
Traore had recently met with the country’s military rulers.
“These young colonels are children … I tell them the mistakes made and what to avoid and I hope, I hope they understood,” he said.
When asked about the state of the country, which is often described as near collapse, he replied, “I have never despaired of my country, (there is) such a mess, but there are still patriots among us.”
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.
