Sadiq al-Mahdi | File picture

Leading Sudanese politician and former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi has died in hospital in the United Arab Emirates after being infected with coronavirus, according to media reports.

Mahdi, 84, was Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister and was overthrown in 1989 in the military coup that bought former president Omar al-Bashir to power.

Last month, al-Mahdi’s family said he had tested positive for COVID-19, and was transferred to the UAE for treatment a few days later following a brief hospitalization in Sudan.

In a statement, the Umma Party said Mahdi would be buried on Friday morning in the city of Omdurman in Sudan.

Mahdi had returned to Sudan in December 2018, following a year-long self-exile, just as protests over worsening economic conditions and Bashir’s rule gathered steam.

His daughter Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi, deputy leader of the Umma Party, was among those detained during the demonstrations.

He assumed the leadership of the Ansar and the leadership of the United National Front following the death of his father, Siddiq al-Mahdi, in 1961, before he was elected Prime Minister of Sudan between 1966 and 1967 and then in 1986 and 1989.

Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi maintains a wide stature among the Sudanese. He was one of those who opposed the defunct Brotherhood regime headed by Omar Al-Bashir in 2014, and he had been thrown into prison for that.

He was arrested several times during the years 1969, 1973, 1983 and 1989, and after the revolution of Dec 2018, he became president of the Sudan Call Forces, a coalition that includes civil parties and civil society organizations.