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Amadou Toumani Touré, Former Malian President, Dies at 72
Mr. Touré, who led Mali through a tumultuous transition from military rule in 1991, was the country’s second democratically chosen president. He was later ousted himself in a military coup.
Amadou Toumani Touré, a former president of Mali who helped shape the country’s political landscape over two decades before being toppled in a military coup in 2012, died on Monday in Istanbul. He was 72.
Mr. Touré’s chief of staff, Seydou Cissouma, confirmed the death, at a hospital, but provided no details.
In a statement, President Bah N’Daw of Mali praised Mr. Touré for helping to modernize the country and dedicating “all his love and all his strengths” to it.
Mr. Touré’s career — first as the military leader of a coup in 1991 that brought him to power for little more than a year, and later as Mali’s president from 2002 to 2012 — reflected the recent tumultuous history of that West African country, a series of military overthrows, rocky political transitions and local insurgencies.
As the second democratically chosen president in Mali’s post-independence history, Mr. Touré presided over improvements to hospitals, schools and other infrastructure and put in place a national medical insurance plan. He was praised for his diplomatic skills and for favoring consensus over confrontation.
Yet after he was re-elected in 2007, Mr. Touré, widely known by his initials, A.T.T., was accused of failing to contain two insurgencies in the country’s north, one led by Tuareg rebel groups, the other by jihadists.
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