Hosni Mubarak

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (محمد حسني السيد مبارك,, Muḥammad Ḥusnī Sayyid Mubārak; born 4 May 1928) is a former Egyptian military and political leader who served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.

Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in the Egyptian Air Force. He served as its commander from 1972 to 1975 and rose to the rank of air chief marshal in 1973. Some time in the 1950s, he returned to the Air Force Academy as an instructor, remaining there until early 1959. He assumed presidency after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mubarak's presidency lasted almost thirty years, making him Egypt's longest-serving ruler since Muhammad Ali Pasha, who ruled the country from 1805 to 1848, a reign of 43 years. Mubarak stepped down after 18 days of demonstrations during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. On 11 February 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned as president and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

On 13 April 2011, a prosecutor ordered Mubarak and both of his sons (Alaa and Gamal) to be detained for 15 days of questioning about allegations of corruption and abuse of power. Mubarak was then ordered to stand trial on charges of negligence for failing to halt the killing of peaceful protesters during the revolution. These trials began on 3 August 2011. On 2 June 2012, an Egyptian court sentenced Mubarak to life imprisonment. After sentencing, he was reported to have suffered a series of health crises. On 13 January 2013, Egypt's Court of Cassation (the nation's high court of appeal) overturned Mubarak's sentence and ordered a retrial. On retrial, Mubarak and his sons were convicted on 9 May 2015 of corruption and given prison sentences. Mubarak was detained in a military hospital and his sons were freed 12 October 2015 by a Cairo court. He was acquitted on 2 March 2017 by Court of Cassation, Egypt's top appeals court. He was released on 24 March 2017.

Early life and Air Force career
Hosni Mubarak was born on 4 May 1928 in Kafr El-Meselha, Monufia Governorate, Egypt. On 2 February 1949, he left the Military Academy and joined the Air Force Academy, gaining his commission as a pilot officer on 13 March 1950 and eventually receiving a bachelor's degree in aviation sciences.

Mubarak served as an Egyptian Air Force officer in various formations and units; he spent two years in a Spitfire fighter squadron. Some time in the 1950s, he returned to the Air Force Academy as an instructor, remaining there until early 1959. From February 1959 to June 1961, Mubarak undertook further training in the Soviet Union, attending a Soviet pilot training school in Moscow and another at Kant Air Base near Bishkek in the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic.

Mubarak undertook training on the Ilyushin Il-28 and Tupolev Tu-16 jet bombers. In 1964 he gained a place at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. On his return to Egypt, he served as a wing commander, then as a base commander; he commanded the Cairo West Air Base in October 1966 then briefly commanded the Beni Suef Air Base. In November 1967, Mubarak became the Air Force Academy's commander when he was credited with doubling the number of Air Force pilots and navigators during the pre-October War years. Two years later, he became Chief of Staff for the Egyptian Air Force.

In 1972, Mubarak became Commander of the Air Force and Egyptian Deputy Minister of Defense. On 6 October 1973, the Egyptian Air Force launched a surprise attack on Israeli soldiers on the east bank of the Suez Canal. Egyptian pilots hit 90% of their targets, making Mubarak a national hero. The next year he was promoted to Air Chief Marshal in recognition of service during the October War of 1973 against Israel. Mubarak was credited in some publications for Egypt's initial strong performance in the war. The Egyptian analyst Mohamed Hassanein Heikal said the Air Force played a mostly psychological role in the war, providing an inspirational sight for the Egyptian ground troops who carried out the crossing of the Suez Canal, rather than for any military necessity. However Mubarak's influence was also disputed by Shahdan El-Shazli, the daughter of the former Egyptian military Chief of Staff Saad el-Shazly. She said Mubarak exaggerated his role in the 1973 war. In an interview with the Egyptian independent newspaper Almasry Alyoum (26 February 2011), El-Shazli said Mubarak altered documents to take credit from her father for the initial success of the Egyptian forces in 1973. She also said photographs pertaining to the discussions in the military command room were altered and Saad El-Shazli was erased and replaced with Mubarak. She stated she intends to take legal action.

Vice President of Egypt
In April 1975, Sadat appointed Mubarak Vice President of Egypt. In this position, he took part in government consultations that dealt with the future disengagement of forces agreement with Israel. In September 1975, Mubarak went on a mission to Riyadh and Damascus to persuade the Saudi Arabian and Syrian governments to accept the disengagement agreement signed with the Israeli government ("Sinai II"), but was refused a meeting by the Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. During his meetings with the Saudi government, Mubarak developed a friendship with the nation's powerful Crown Prince Fahd, whom Sadat had refused to meet or contact and who was now seen as major player who could help mend the failing relationship between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Mubarak also developed friendships with several other important Arab figureheads, including Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, Oman's Sultan Qaboos, Morocco's King Hassan II, and Sudan's President Jaafar Nimeiry.

Sadat also sent Mubarak to numerous meetings with foreign leaders outside the Arab world. Mubarak's political significance as Vice-President can be seen from a conversation held on 23 June 1975 between Foreign Minister Fahmy and US Ambassador Hermann Eilts. Fahmy told Eilts that "Mubarak is, for the time being at least, likely to be a regular participant in all sensitive meetings" and he advised the Ambassador not to antagonize Mubarak because he was Sadat's personal choice. Though supportive of Sadat's earlier efforts made to bring the Sinai Peninsula back into Egyptian control, Mubarak agreed with the views of various Arab figureheads and opposed the Camp David Accords for failing to address other issues relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Sadat even transferred his decisionmaking authority to Mubarak temporarily at times he went on vacations.

President of Egypt


Mubarak was injured during the assassination of President Sadat in October 1981 by soldiers led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli. Following Sadat's death, Mubarak became the fourth president of Egypt.

Egypt's return to the Arab League
Until Libya's suspension from the Arab League at the beginning of the Libyan Civil War, Egypt was the only state in the history of the organization to have had its membership suspended, because of President Sadat's peace treaty with Israel. In June 1982, Mubarak met King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, which marked a beginning of an Egyptian-Saudi rapprochement. Since Egypt is the most populous Arab country and Saudi Arabia the richest, the Saudi-Egyptian axis was a powerful force in the Arab world. At a Arab League summit later in 1982 in Fez, Saudi Arabia put forward an Egyptian peace plan where in exchange for Israel resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute by allowing a Palestinian state, the entire Arab world would make peace with Israel.

The Islamic Republic of Iran had from 1979 onward been making the claim to be the leader of the Islamic world, and in particular Ayatollah Khomeini had called for the overthrow of the governments of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab states along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, calling these states illegitimate. The claim of the Ayatollah Khomeini to be the rightful leader of the Islamic world and his attempts to export the Iranian revolution by working to overthrow governments that Khomeini deemed un-Islamic caused profound alarm and fear in the governments that were targeted like Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In the face of the Iranian challenge, the other Arab states looked towards Egypt as an ally. For King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the other leaders of the Arab Gulf states, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict faded into the background and the main concern was resisting Iranian pretensions to be the leader of the Islamic world, meaning that Egypt could not be ignored.

During the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988, Egypt supported Iraq militarily and economically with one million Egyptians working in Iraq to take the place of Iraqi men serving on the front-line. In December 1983, Mubarak welcomed Yasser Arafat of the PLO to a summit in Cairo, marking a rapprochement with the PLO, and from that time, Egypt became the PLO's main ally. In 1985, the Achille Lauro hijacking caused a major crisis in relations when the U.S Air Force forced an EgyptAir plane carrying the Achille Lauro hi-jackers to Tunisia to land in Italy; otherwise the plane would had been shot down. Mubarak stated in a press conference on 12 October 1985: "I am very wounded. Now there is coolness and strain as a result of this incident." Egypt had been ostracized by the other Arab states for signing the Camp David Accords in 1979, but Egypt's weight within the Arab world had led to Egypt regaining its "central place in the Arab world" by 1989. In 1989, Egypt was re-admitted as a full member to the Arab League and the League's headquarters were moved to their original location in Cairo.

Governing style
Throughout the 1980s, Mubarak increased the production of affordable housing, clothing, furniture, and medicine. By the time he became President, Mubarak was one of a few Egyptian officials who refused to visit Israel and vowed to take a less enthusiastic approach to normalizing relations with the Israeli government. Under Mubarak, Israeli journalists often wrote about the "cold peace" with Egypt, observing Israeli-Egyptian relations were frosty at best. Mubarak was quick to deny that his policies would result in difficulties for Egyptian-Israeli dealings in the future.

Despite or perhaps because of the Camp David Accords, Murbarak "fostered a culture of virulent anti-Semitism in Egypt" and turned Egypt into "the world's most prolific producer of anti-Semitic ideas and attitudes". Mubarak justified the Camp David accords in anti-Semitic terms in an interview, saying the Jews controlled the world economy. Mubarak stated: "Against us stood the most intelligent people on the earth-a people that controls the international press, the world economy and the world finances. We succeeded in compelling the Jews to do what we wanted; we received all our land back, up to the last grain of sand! We have outwitted them, and what have we given them in return? A piece of paper!...We were shrewder than the shrewdest people on the earth! We managed to hamper their steps in every direction. We have established sophisticated machinery to control and limit to the minimum contacts with the Jews. We have proven that making peace with Israel does not entail Jewish domination and that there is no obligation to develop relations with Israel beyond those we desire'." During the Mubarak years, the Egyptian media portrayed the infamous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as genuine, accused the Jews of spreading venereal diseases in Egypt, of working to sabotage Egyptian agriculture, and of causing the problems of drug addiction among the Egyptian youth. The anti-Semitic pamphlet Human Sacrifice in the Talmud was made mandatory reading by the Egyptian Ministry of Education. The Israeli historian Major Efraim Karsh wrote in 2006 that in Egypt "...numberless articles, scholarly writings, books, cartoons, public statements, and radio and television programs, Jews are painted in the blackest terms imaginable". Karsh accused Mubarak of being personally antisemitic, writing he "evidently shared the premises" of his propaganda. Egypt's heavy dependence on US aid and its hopes for US pressure on Israel for a Palestinian settlement continued under Mubarak. He quietly improved relations with the former Soviet Union. In 1987, Mubarak won an election to a second six-year term.

In his early years in power, Mubarak expanded the Egyptian State Security Investigations Service (Mabahith Amn ad-Dawla) and the Central Security Forces (anti-riot and containment forces). According to Tarek Osman, the experience of seeing his predecessor assassinated "right in front of him" and his lengthy military career—which was longer than those of Nasser or Sadat—may have instilled in him more focus and absorption with security than seemed the case with the latter heads of state. Mubarak sought advice and confidence not in leading ministers, senior advisers or leading intellectuals, but from his security chiefs—"interior ministers, army commanders, and the heads of the ultra-influential intelligence services." All through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, violations of human rights by the security services in Egypt were described as "systematic” by Amnesty International. In 2007, Amnesty International reported that the Egyptian police routinely engaged in “beatings, electric shocks, prolonged suspension by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions, death threats and sexual abuse”. The state remained large under Mubarak employing 8 million people out of a population of 75 million. < Because of his positions against Islamic fundamentalism and his diplomacy towards Israel, Mubarak was the target of repeated assassination attempts. According to the BBC, Mubarak survived six attempts on his life. In June 1995, there was an alleged assassination attempt involving noxious gases and Egyptian Islamic Jihad while Mubarak was in Ethiopia for a conference of the Organization of African Unity. He was also reportedly injured by a knife-wielding assailant in Port Said in September 1999.

Neither Israel nor the United States ever made much of any issue of the antisemitism of the Egyptian media under Mubarak. A rare exception was in 2002 when the Egyptian state television aired the mini-series Horseman without a horse which portrayed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as genuine. Both the Israeli and American ambassadors handed in notes of protest against the airing of Horseman without a horse for inciting antisemitism.