The body of Angola’s former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain last month, was to arrive in Luanda on Saturday, according to a government statement.
A lawyer for dos Santos’s widow confirmed the remains, which have been at the centre of a family dispute, have left Barcelona and were on their way to the Angolan capital.
“On Friday we made all the preparations, the customs papers, the embalming, we did everything and, indeed, this morning the body is flying to Angola,” Josep Riba Ciurana, a lawyer for the widow, Ana Paula dos Santos, told AFP.
Dos Santos, who ruled the oil-rich African nation with an iron first from 1979 to 2017, died in Barcelona on July 8 at the age of 79 after suffering a cardiac arrest.
Since then, the question of when and where he will be buried has pitted the Angolan government and his widow against some of his adult children.
A Barcelona court this week ordered his remains to be delivered to Paula and granted authorisation for “the repatriation and international transfer of (his) remains to Angola”.