Mubarak Assumes Power after Sadat's Assassination
Hosni Mubarak became president of Egypt on 14 October 1981, eight days after Anwar Sadat was shot beside him at a military parade. He was the vice-president and had been sitting next to Sadat on the reviewing stand when soldiers from a truck in the parade opened fire; he was wounded in the hand. The assassins were Islamists from Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and their grievance was the peace treaty with Israel signed at Camp David in 1979, for which Egypt had been expelled from the Arab League. Mubarak was an air force officer by career — a bomber pilot, then commander of the air academy, then chief of the air force, who had planned the opening strike of the October War in 1973 that gave Egypt the standing to negotiate from. He declared a state of emergency on taking office, and it stayed in force for the entire thirty years of his rule, permitting detention without charge, military and state security courts, and restrictions on assembly. He kept the treaty with Israel and the American aid that came with it, rebuilt relations with the Arab states, and joined the coalition against Iraq in 1991 in exchange for the cancellation of half Egypt's debt. Economic liberalisation from the 1990s produced growth and a class of well-connected businessmen around his son Gamal, who was visibly being prepared to succeed him. That succession is what made 2011 possible. He resigned on 11 February 2011 after eighteen days of protest, was tried, convicted, acquitted on appeal, and died at home in 2020. He is the only Egyptian president since 1952 to leave office alive and be tried by his own courts.
- Year: 1981 CE
- Category: Diplomacy
