Marion Barry, who was famously videotaped smoking crack cocaine while former mayor of the US capital city of Washington, is scheduled to undergo kidney transplant surgery later Friday, the Washington Post reported.
Barry, 72, suffers diabetes and high blood pressure and has been receiving kidney dialysis treatments since late last year, the newspaper reported early Friday on its website, dpa reported.
The flamboyant former mayor, who won a seat on the Washington City Council in 2006 and was re-elected last year, has already scheduled a press conference late Friday to speak with reporters following the procedure at Howard University Hospital.
Barry is receiving the kidney from a 47-year-old woman, a donor whom he found privately rather than through the usual waiting list for cadaver organs.
The surgery comes amid his latest legal problems, stemming from a failure to file 2007 federal income tax forms. Prosecutors recently asked a court to jail him for violating his probation from a 2005 tax case for failing to file in several previous years.
Barry blamed his illness for the latest tax problems.
The African-American politician became an international laughingstock in 1990, when he was taped during a sting operation smoking crack in a Washington hotel room. But Barry has remained a popular, anti-authority figure in the majority-black city's impoverished Anacostia district, which remains his political base.
After serving a brief prison term for a drug conviction, Barry was again elected mayor in 1994. He left politics after 1998 but later sought and won a city council seat from Anacostia.
After his guilty plea in the 2005 tax case, Barry tested positive for cocaine and marijuana and underwent counselling.
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