Former Algerian President has died at 84, the presidency said on Friday, more than two years after he under pressure from mass protests and the army.
Bouteflika, a veteran of Algeria's war for independence, had ruled the North African country for two decades before his resignation in April 2019 after rejecting his plan to seek a fifth term.
He had rarely been seen in public before his departure since a stroke in 2013.
After Bouteflika's resignation, in a bid to end the protests demanding political and economic reforms, authorities launched unprecedented investigations into corruption, leading to the imprisonment of several senior officials, including Bouteflika's .
After Algeria's independence from France in 1962, former president Bouteflika became Algeria's first foreign minister and an influential figure in the Non-Aligned movement.
As a president of the UN General Assembly, Bouteflika invited to address the body in 1974, a historic step toward international recognition of the Palestinian cause.
He also demanded that China be given a seat in the United Nations, and railed against apartheid rule in South Africa.
In the early 1980s, he went into exile after the death of ex-President Houari Boumediene and settled in Dubai, where he became an adviser to a member of the emirate's ruling family.
He returned home in the 1990s when Algeria was being ravaged by a war between the army and armed Islamist militants that killed at least 200,000 people.
Elected president in 1999, he managed to negotiate a truce with Islamists and launched a national reconciliation process allowing the country to restore peace.
(Reuters)