(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 25, 2010 Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy (unseen) give a press conference at the presidential palace in Bamako after French hostage Pierre Camatte was released by Mali with an exchange of islamists prisoners. France denied that it had paid a ransom for Camatte, who was kidnapped on November 26 from a hotel by Malians who passed him on to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the North African franchise of Osama Bin Laden's militant movement. - Mali's former president Amadou Toumani Toure, who led the Sahel nation for 10 years before being ousted in a coup, has died in Turkey aged 72, a family member and a doctor said on November 10, 2020. (Photo by Eric Feferberg / POOL / AFP)
Former Malian president Amadou Toumani Toure, who won acclaim as a champion of democracy, has died at the age of 72.
Toure died in Turkey on Monday night, according to his chief of staff, Seydou Cissouma.
Jeune Afrique reported the former president was flown to Turkey after undergoing a heart operation in Bamako.
“A major actor in Malian democracy, ATT, over the course of his exceptional life, contributed to shaping a modern Mali,” interim president Bah N’Daw said in a statement.
Widely known by his initials ATT, Toure led an army coup in 1991 against military ruler Moussa Traore, who had violently suppressed anti-government protests. Toure organised democratic elections the following year and handed over power to a civilian president, earning him the nickname of “Soldier of Democracy”.
Toure returned to the presidency in 2002, winning election with nearly 65% of the vote, and was re-elected to a final five-year term in 2007.
During his presidency, Mali won international praise as a regional model of democracy for its regular elections and relatively free press. Toure was planning to step down when his second term expired in 2012.
But his authority was weakened by high-level corruption, armed opposition in the desert north and a perception among some Malians that elections were not as free and fair as international observers suggested.
That ultimately led to the March 2012 coup by mid-ranking officers, followed by the fall of northern Mali to jihadist militants later that year.
Toure’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.
Rita Osakwe/Agency Reports
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