After becoming South Africa’s first black president, leading the movement to end South African apartheid and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela lost a battle to a long illness in his home outside Johannesburg on Thursday.

The 95-year-old icon had been hospitalized for recurring lung infections for three months this summer and was receiving treatment in his home when he died.

Among his many global justice initiatives, in 2000 Mandela helped mediate the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial after the terrorist attack in Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people, including 35 Syracuse University students on the flight. In 1994 and 1997, Mandela offered South Africa as a neutral country to host the trial, which would eventually take place in a specially-convened Scottish Court in the Netherlands, saying “no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge.”

Mandela’s fight against apartheid, a system of legal segregation that oppressed South Africa’s black majority, caused him to be imprisoned for 27 years. Though he was originally sentenced to life imprisonment, Mandela died, not a prisoner, but a global icon referred to as “Tata,” meaning “father,” by many South Africans.

Mandela will receive a full state funeral at an undisclosed date, South African President Jacob Zuma announced Thursday. Until that time, all flags in South Africa will fly at half-staff.