BAKU -- Ayaz Mutallibov, Azerbaijan's first president following the collapse of the Soviet Union, has died in Baku at the age of 83.
Media reports on March 28 citing Mutallibov's relatives and friends said that he died the day before in Baku. The cause of death was not revealed.
Mutalibov was elected in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in January 1990, as the Soviet Azerbaijan republic's Communist Party head. In May that year he became president of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.
On September 8, 1991, three months before the Soviet Union was officially dissolved, Mutallibov was elected as Azerbaijan's first president. The Soviet Union collapsed in December that year.
In 1992, political opposition forced Mutallibov out of the presidency and he left for Moscow.
He stayed in the Russian capital for two decades after being accused at home of involvement in a crackdown on pro-independence protests in January 1990 -- dubbed Black January -- in which dozens of people were killed.
Mutallibov returned to Azerbaijan in July 2012 after lawmakers approved legislation that granted heads of state immunity for acts committed while in office.