CAIRO: He survived 10 attempts on his life, and at 82 his health was a subject of speculation. But in the end, it was his people who brought down Egypt’s modern-day pharaoh.
Pulling off a second surprise in as many days, President Hosni Mubarak on Friday stepped down and handed over power to the army from whose ranks he emerged, his deputy Omar Suleiman announced on television. Until the outbreak of anti-government protests on January 25, Mubarak seemed insurmountable as president of the most populous nation in the Arab world. His rise to power came unexpectedly, when his predecessor Anwar Sadat – who made history by signing a peace deal with Israel – was gunned down by Islamist militants on October 6, 1981 during a military parade in Cairo.
He took office a week after the assassination, and since then he ruled without interruption under a draconian emergency law that remains in force. Islamic fundamentalist groups – including Al-Jihad, Gamaa Islamiyya and Talaeh al-Fatah – were responsible for most of the attempts on Mubarak’s life on both Egyptian and foreign soil.
The first direct attempt to kill him came in 1993, a year after Islamists launched a campaign of violence aimed at toppling the secular government, when a bid to fire rockets at his plush Cairo residence was foiled.
Later murder attempts involved a variety of schemes, including a plot to car-bomb the presidential motorcade in Cairo. In 1995, militants opened fire at the presidential motorcade in Addis Abiba. The previous year saw an attempt to kill him with explosives as he was due to meet Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi at a military airport.
In September 1999, Mubarak was slightly wounded when a man with no apparent links to any Islamic group stabbed him in Port Said.
Health-wise, Mubarak’s reputation as for vigour – he was once known to play squash almost daily – was dented in 2003 when he fainted while addressing parliament. Officials blamed his collapse on a cold and the fact that he had been fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. In 2004, he underwent surgery in Germany for a slipped disc, intensifying speculation on potential successors. Then last March he returned to Germany for the removal of his gall bladder and a growth on the small intestine. Rumours that he had died under the surgeon’s knife were quashed when state television showed him recovering.
Mubarak’s health was usually a taboo subject and the father of two, whose wife Suzanne is half-Welsh, kept his private life a carefully guarded secret. In 2007, speculation about his health snowballed to the extent that Mubarak had to make an unscheduled public appearance to lay rumour to rest. The octogenarian, with jet black hair – possibly dyed – and aquiline nose, was born on May 4, 1928 in the Nile Delta village of Menufiyah.
He rose through the ranks of the air force and fought in repeated wars with Israel, to claim hero status, before supporting Sadat in pursuing peace with the Jewish state in 1979.
Throughout his years in power, Mubarak maintained the unpopular policy of peace with Israel and accommodation with the West that cost Sadat his life.
