An autopsy on the remains of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the former president of Angola, has been approved by a Barcelona court.
On Friday, he passed away in the Spanish city where he had traveled for medical attention. Tchize dos Santos, the late president’s daughter, made the request for the autopsy.
She has mentioned a plot to have her father killed in order to stop him from backing the opposition in the approaching elections in Angola.
The Dos Santos family’s attorneys have criticised attempts by the Angolan government to bring the body back for a national funeral despite the ex-clear president’s desire to be laid to rest privately in Spain.
Since stepping down in 2017, he had mostly lived in Barcelona. He had been undergoing treatment for various health challenges.
Angola’s current President Joao Lourenco, announced five days of national mourning starting Friday, when the country’s flag will fly at half-mast and public events are cancelled.
Dos Santos came to power four years after Angola gained independence from Portugal and became engrossed in the Cold War as a proxy battlefield.
His political journey spanned single-party Marxist rule in post-colonial years and a democratic system of government adopted in 2008. He voluntarily stepped down when his health began failing.\
In public, he was unassuming and even appeared shy at times. But he was a shrewd operator behind the scenes.
He held full control on the 17th-century presidential palace in Luanda, the southern African country’s Atlantic capital, by distributing Angola’s wealth between his army generals and political rivals to ensure their loyalty. He demoted anyone he perceived to be gaining a level of popularity that could upset his control.