Longtime Egyptian leader dies
CAIRO — Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian leader who was the autocratic face of stability in the Middle East for nearly 30 years before being forced from power in an Arab Spring uprising, died Tuesday, state-run TV announced. He was 91.
Mubarak was a stalwart U.S. ally, a bulwark against Islamic militancy and guardian of Egypt’s peace with Israel.
But to the hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians who rallied for 18 days of unprecedented street protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere in 2011, Mubarak was a latter-day pharaoh and a symbol of autocratic misrule.
His overthrow, however, plunged the country into years of chaos and uncertainty, and set up a power struggle between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood group that he had long outlawed.
Some 2½ years after Mubarak’s ouster, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi led the military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president and rolled back freedoms gained in the 2011 uprising. State TV said Mubarak died at a Cairo hospital where he had undergone an unspecified surgery.
El-Sissi offered condolences and praised Mubarak’s service during the 1973 war with Israel but made no mention of Mubarak’s almost three-decade rule as president of the most populous Arab state. He announced three days of national mourning beginning Wednesday.
“The Presidency mourns with great sorrow the former President of the Republic, Mr. Mohammed Hosni Mubarak,” he said in a statement.
It referred to Mubarak as “one of the leaders and heroes of the glorious October war, as he assumed command of the Air Force during the war that restored dignity and pride to the Arab nation.”