Ousted Malian president to return from exile

BAMAKO: Mali’s ousted former president Amadou Toumani Toure will return to the country today for the first time since the coup that deposed him, he told AFP.

Mutinous soldiers overthrew the government and detained Toure on March 22, 2012, precipitating the fall of the country’s northern territory to Islamist rebels allied with Al-Qaeda.

The coup led by army captain Amadou Sanogo toppled what had been heralded as one of the region’s most stable democracies, and Toure has been living in exile in neighbouring Senegal ever since.

Mali’s current president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (also known as IBK), took office in September 2013 in an election held after Sanogo agreed to step aside.

“With the agreement of Mali’s president, I will return to Bamako on Sunday,” Toure told AFP by phone, in what is believed to be his first public statement since he left the country.

“I am happy. I would like to thank the Senegalese authorities. I will see my brother, President IBK, today, and I am not there to do politics,” he added.

Keita said at an event earlier in the day the moment had arrived ‘for us to tell our brother Amadou Toumani Toure to return to Mali’.

Mali holds a presidential election in 2018 but Keita has yet to say whether he will seek another term.

“I will send a state plane to fetch him and bring him back to Mali,” Keita added, describing how he had invited the ex-leader for lunch today. — AFP