Birth of Hosni Mubarak

Hosni Mubarak was born on 4 May 1928 in Kafr el-Muṣīlḥa. An Egyptian air force officer, Mubarak commanded the air force in the 1973 war with Israel and then served as vice president under Anwar Sadat. He became president when Sadat was assassinated in October 1981 and ruled for nearly thirty years under emergency law. His government maintained the peace treaty with Israel and close ties with the United States, but it was widely criticized for corruption, repression of opponents and rigged elections. In early 2011, mass protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square forced him to resign. He was later tried, convicted of failing to prevent the killing of protesters, then ultimately acquitted on appeal, and he died in Cairo in 2020.

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