Pierre Buyoya, the former President of Burundi has died of Coronavirus in Paris, weeks after he resigned as the African Union's special envoy to Mali and the Sahel.
AFP reported that Buyoya who is credited with helping push democracy in the small African country but accused of being involved in his successor's assassination, died at the age of 71.
A family member said;
"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"
Buyoya died just two months after being convicted in absentia by a court in Burundi of the 1993 murder of a successor, a killing that triggered more than a decade of ethnic bloodletting
At the time of his death, Buyoya had been living in Mali. An official at the Clinique Pasteur in the Malian capital Bamako told Reuters Buyoya had been treated there before being evacuated to Paris overnight. He gave no further details.
Buyoya, a member of the Tutsi minority that held power in Burundi for decades after the country's 1962 independence from Belgium, was president for 13 years in total during two stints, from 1987-1993 and from 1996-2003.
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