By Catarina Demony
LUANDA, (Reuters) – The body of Angola’s former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain in July, was due to arrive in Luanda on Saturday, the Angolan government said in a statement.
Dos Santos, who stepped down five years ago, died on July 8 at the age of 79 at a clinic in Barcelona, where he was being treated following a prolonged illness.
A Spanish judge ruled on Wednesday that the death was from natural causes, ruling out foul play, and allowed the release and repatriation of his body.
The Carmen Varela and Molins law firms representing dos Santos’s daughter, Tchize dos Santos, had earlier successfully requested a full autopsy citing alleged “suspicious circumstances” of his death, without providing evidence, and had asked for his body to be buried in Barcelona.
Tchize and her lawyers have argued that dos Santos’s wish was to be buried in Barcelona rather than his body being returned to Angola for a state funeral, which they say dos Santos’s successor, Joao Lourenço, will likely use for political purposes.
Although handpicked by dos Santos, Lourenço swiftly moved to investigate allegations of multi-billion dollar corruption during the former president’s era, often involving the dos Santos family.
Dos Santos never specifically responded to the allegations that he had allowed corruption to become rampant.
(Reporting by Graham Keeley, Andrei Khalip, Catarina Demony; Editing by Frances Kerry)
