Hosni Mubarak, the former autocratic president of Egypt, whose hold on power was broken and place in history upended by a public uprising against the poverty, corruption and repressive police tactics that came to define his 30 years in office, died on Tuesday in Cairo, at the age of 91, The New York Times reported.
State TV said he died at a hospital after undergoing surgery there but gave no other details.
Mubarak spent most of his final years at the Maadi Military Hospital in southern Cairo, under guard in a room overlooking the Nile as he defiantly battled courtroom charges of corruption and conspiracy to murder. He was released on March 24, 2017, having been convicted in a single, relatively minor case, and spirited across the city to his mansion in the affluent neighborhood of Heliopolis.
But his edifice of power turned out to be fragile and dated, built on strong-arm rule, cronyism and an alliance with the West. It was ultimately brought down by the shock wave of popular unrest in the Arab world — calls for democracy, the rule of law and an end to corruption — that came to be called the Arab Spring, the Times added.
He was forced to resign on February 11, 2011, after 18 days of protests, when the Egyptian public poured into the streets by the millions, stripping authority from a man who had been likened to a modern-day pharaoh.
At first, it appeared he would be able simply to withdraw from the scene and live quietly in his villa in Sharm el Sheikh, a Red Sea resort. But the crowds would not allow it. They demanded that he and his family be investigated for corruption, and that he be held accountable for the more than 800 people killed during the days of protest.
Mubarak made a rare public appearance last October, when, in a video posted on YouTube, he spoke of his memories of Egypt’s 1973 war against Israel, in which he commanded Egypt’s air force. It was the first time he had spoken before a camera since his ouster during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Mubarak once appeared invincible. He survived multiple assassination attempts, held power longer than anyone since Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of the modern Egyptian state, suppressed a wave of terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists, and seemed even to defy aging.
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