PARIS (SD) – Former Somali Defense minister, Professor Mohamed Abdi Mohamed aka Gandhi has today died in France. He was 72.

Gandhi, once the President of the self declared Azania State in southern Somalia, now Jubbaland has been receiving medication at a hospital in Besançon town of France, where died on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear what he was ailing from.

He was the chairman of the technical committee that was responsible for drawing the roadmap for the Arte talks in Djibouti in the year 2000.

Arta reconciliation had culminated in the first formal government in Somalia since the collapse of the central government in 1991.

Gandhi was appointed Somalia’s defence Minister in 2009 during the reign of Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke and President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. His tenure as minister ended in 2010.

He received his Space Anthropology Certificate in March 1992 at the University of New Lisbon in Portugal as part of the Erasmus exchange.

Prof.  Gandhi was an active participant in the Somali peace process and Principal Consultant in the Mapping of Somali Civil Society.