Former Dominican President Salvador Jorge Blanco has died at the age of 84.

In a Twitter message, his son Orlando Jorge Mera said the former president died peacefully yesterday at his home in Santo Domingo.

Jorge Blanco had been in a coma since suffering a cerebral haematoma when he fell out of bed on the morning of November 20.

He was president from 1982 to 1986. He was sentenced with three other men to 20 years in prison in 1991 for misusing government funds. But that conviction was overturned in 2001 by an appeals court that ruled he was never given the right to defend himself during the trial.

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