UPDATE: Burundi’s President Nkurunziza dies of heart attack week after wife contracted COVID-19

President of Burundi Pierre Nkurunziza has died after a heart attack at the age of 55, the government said today, 10 days after his wife was taken to hospital with COVID-19, Daily Mail reports.

The African country announced Nkurunziza’s ‘unexpected’ death with ‘great sadness’ today, declaring a national week of mourning.

Nkurunziza had felt unwell on Saturday and ‘to very great surprise’ his health worsened on Monday, leading to a cardiac arrest from which he died in hospital, officials said.

His wife Denise was airlifted for coronavirus treatment in Kenya on May 30, prompting some suspicion about the President’s true cause of death.

Nkurunziza was due to leave office in August after a controversial 15-year term marked by claims of repression and human rights abuses.

Nkurunziza took office in 2005 under a power-sharing deal following a 12-year civil war which left 300,000 people dead.

His decision to run for a disputed third term in 2015 plunged the country into violence, leading to hundreds more deaths.

Facing allegations of widespread abuses, his government became the first country to leave the International Criminal Court in 2017.

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Human Rights Watch says the police and ruling party are known to carry out ‘widespread human rights abuses’ including killings and arbitrary arrests.

Nkurunziza’s party was confirmed as the winner of May’s election last week, paving the way for the first peaceful transfer of power since independence in 1962.

The outgoing president had backed retired army general Evariste Ndayishimiye as his successor and saw him win nearly 70 per cent of the vote.

The opposition National Freedom Council (CNL), headed by Agathon Rwasa, had alleged the May 20 election was riddled with fraud and irregularities.

However, a panel of judges ruled last week that the results were valid and that opposition complaints were ‘null and void’. It is not clear what happens now.

In addition, a WHO official was expelled from the country during the campaign after the agency raised concerns about crowded rallies spreading coronavirus.

The government has downplayed the threat from the virus, saying it has only 83 cases of the disease.

Despite the government’s statement that Nkurunziza died of a heart attack, some in Burundi wondered whether COVID-19 was the real cause of death.

“When Nkurunziza’s wife was flown to Kenya suffering from COVID-19, many in Burundi suspected the president himself was sick,” said Justin Nyabenda, a resident in Bujumbura.

According to an official profile, Nkurunziza was born in 1964 and lost his father during a wave of ethnic violence in the 1970s.

Nkurunziza himself is said to have narrowly escaped assassination in 1995 before subsequently joining a rebel group during the civil war.

His government profile claims he was a ‘talented sportsman’ who also owned plantations of bananas, pineapples and vegetables.

He won a second term in office in 2010 and claimed he was entitled to a third in 2015 because he had come to power under different arrangements in 2005.

The deadly turmoil that followed badly damaged ties with the international community, with the UN reporting more than 300 extrajudicial killings.

Nkurunziza survived a coup attempt shortly after the 2015 vote while travelling in Tanzania and had left Burundi only once since then.