Former envoy to Peru Ahmad Mokhtar dies

Malaysia's former ambassador to Peru, Datuk Ahmad Mokhtar Selat, has died, his son Rizal Afandy said today.

Ahmad Mokhtar was 66. He died of cancer at 7.40 pm yesterday at the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre, said Rizal Afandy, 38.

"Father was undergoing treatment for the past three weeks (at the hospital).

He had been diagnosed with kidney cancer in March 2013.

"Six months later, doctors found that the cancer had spread to the lungs and other parts of the body," he told reporters at his house in Jalan SS4B/1, Kelana Jaya.

He had been the country's ambassador to Peru for three years up to 1999, and was one of the hostages when guerrillas of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement seized the residence of Japan's ambassador in Lima in December 1996.

Ahmad Mokhtar will be buried at the Muslim cemetery in Section 8, Kota Damansara, today.

Ahmad Mokhtar is survived by wife Datin Jeliah Ghalim and three children.