Erstwhile President of Burundi, Pierre Buyoya has reportedly died of Covid-19 complications.
Buyoya, 71 was reported dead in Paris where he was receiving treatement from Coronavirus, close relatives of the deceased had revealed to newsmen.
The former president served as special envoy of the African Union to Mali and the Sahel from 2012 until November this year.
Speaking further on his death, another family member said, “he had been hospitalised Wednesday last week in Bamako where he was placed on a respirator.”
“He was evacuated to Paris yesterday afternoon. His plane made a stopover and arrived in France in the evening. He died as the ambulance took him to hospital in Paris for treatment,” the source said.
Buyoya resigned as AU envoy in late November after being sentenced to life imprisonment in Burundi the month prior over the 1993 assassination of his successor, which he denounced as politically motivated.
Buyoya, an ethnic Tutsi, first came to power in Burundi, one of the smallest countries in Africa, in a coup in 1987.
He stepped down in 1993 in the country’s first democratic elections in which Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, resoundingly beat him.
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