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.

Nimeiri came to power in a coup in 1969 and was overthrown after 16 years in power, a turbulent period shaped by divisions that persist to this day about radical Islam, Khartoum’s stranglehold on power and control of oil resources.