Sudan's former president Nimeiri dies

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Former Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiri, who brought Islamic law to Sudan and became a close U.S. ally before he was ousted in a coup in 1985, died on Saturday, government officials said.

He was 79-years-old.

"We were expecting this for a time, he had developed an illness. Today he died," presidential assistant Magdi Abdel Aziz told Reuters.

The funeral will probably be in Khartoum's Omdurman area on Sunday morning.

"He was too ill to be taken out of the country for treatment," his secretary Makkawi Ahmed said, without giving any further details of his illness.

Nimeiri came to power in a 1969 coup that ended five years of civilian rule marred by corruption and economic problems.

He spent 16 stormy years as Sudanese leader until he was himself overthrown in 1985 and granted political asylum in Egypt.

A devout Moslem, Nimeiri began his rule as a left-wing admirer of Egypt's late president Gamal Abdel Nasser but he gradually shifted to the right to become a U.S. ally, smashing insurrections by Moslem groups and leftists.

He imposed Islamic sharia law in 1983, an act that is widely seen as the major catalyst for a 22-year-long war that pitched the Muslim north against the mainly Christian south.