• Diack will be buried on Thursday and will be cremated • Lawyers said the former FIFA president will donate organs
Former president of world athletics, Lamine Diack, who is currently serving a 15-year jail sentence for corruption has died aged 88.
Diack is expected to be buried on Thursday in his native Senegal before he is cremated, his son Lamine said.
Diack died in the Senegalese capital Dakar and he is being buried in accordance with Islamic tradition.
During his 26-year term as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, a key pillar of the world governing body’s reputation, Diack was accused of taking bribes in return for turning a blind eye to sexual doping by athletes.
After being handed a 15-year jail sentence in absentia in August, Diack was held at the Chadi military jail near Niamey, the capital of neighbouring Niger.
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According to his lawyer Remy Kouamé, Diack will donate his organs upon his release.
Diack’s son said he was going on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, but declined to say why. The conviction and subsequent incarceration led to the resignation of the IOC president, Thomas Bach, in January last year and the resignation or sacking of other members of the organisation’s executive board.
It was not immediately clear who would replace Diack if he were to be pardoned.
The former French IOC member Jean-Louis Bruguiere, an anti-doping expert, said the ongoing statute of limitations under French law prevented him from “exchanging comments” about the case.
Diack is suspected of pocketing up to 40m Swiss francs ($40m) over a period of 20 years, mainly via account in Switzerland, which he also used for corruption with heiress Yelena Isinbayeva, an IOC bronze medallist and former Russian pole vaulter.
Isinbayeva later told a Russian news conference that Diack had also paid her for sex.
“There are suspicions of corruption, there are accusations of sexual exploitation and millions of dollars,” Diack’s spokesman, Sergio Pereira, told AFP when Diack was arrested in November.
Bach said his agency was in contact with the IOC’s ethics and compliance committee over the case.
The Swiss federal prosecutor’s office added it was conducting a criminal investigation and that Diack had been placed under judicial supervision pending an investigation into a financial complaint lodged by the IOC in 2016.
Diack had given the Swiss prosecutors information on the situation, they said.