Hosni Mubarak, former Egyptian president, likened to a modern-day pharaoh, is dead.
Mubarak, was an 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.
He was 91.
His death was confirmed by state TV.
Mr. 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 finally 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.
Last October, he made a rare appearance in a video published on YouTube where he shared his memories of Egypt’s 1973 war against Israel, when 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.
Mr. Mubarak had once appeared invincible. He had 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 appeared even to defy the gravity of age.
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.
He was forced to resign on Feb. 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.
