(GIN) – Jaafar Nimeiri, a Sudanese president who halted one of Africa’s most brutal civil wars in the 1970s but restarted it a decade later by imposing Islamic law, has died in Khartoum after a long illness at the age of 79.
 
Once a left-wing admirer of Egypt's late president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nimeiri gradually shifted to the right and became a US ally, smashing insurrections by Muslim groups and leftists.