Hosni Mubarak - President of Egypt

President of Egypt

During the assassination of President Sadat in October 1981 by soldiers led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, Mubarak was one of the injured.

However, there have been repeated reports that Sadat was assassinated by a plot in which Mubarak was complicit. Most of these assertions have come from Sadat's daughter. A recently published historical novel, "The Search for the Lost Army: The National Geographic and Harvard University Expedition," by Gary S. Chafetz, presents somewhat compelling circumstantial evidence that Mubarak was indeed involved.

Although adored by the West, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and honored as "Man of the Year" on the cover of "Time" magazine, Sadat was perhaps the most hated man in Egypt and the Middle East for having signed the Camp David Accords—the peace treaty with Israel. It was considered "Sadat's peace," not Egypt's. This led to strikes and bread riots. The always tenuous Egyptian economy was soon in free fall. Muslim fundamentalists became more vocal and popular. Over 1,300 opposition politicians were jailed by Sadat as a precaution. Not only did trade with neighboring Arab countries suffer, but Egypt was expelled from the Arab League and all Arab ambassadors were recalled from Cairo. The country seemed headed toward destabilization and chaos. To make matters worse, Israel quickly and flagrantly exploited the hated peace treaty with impunity by annexing East Jerusalem, feverishly constructing West-Bank settlements, and bombing Iraq's nuclear facilities, further infuriating the Muslim World. The Shah of Iran had just fallen two years earlier, with catastrophic results for the West—the United States and Israel, in particular—and for Iran's power elite, who were summarily executed or had to flee the country. There were legitimate fears that the same Islamic fundamentalist revolution was about to seize control of Egypt—the Middle East's most populous nation with its largest army.

As author Chafetz in "The Search for the Lost Army" points out, on 7 October 1981, a photograph appeared on the front page of The New York Times, above the story reporting Sadat's assassination. This photo shows Hosni Mubarak to Sadat's immediate right and Defense Minister Abu Ghazal to Sadat's immediate left (taken by Sadat's official photographer, who was also killed in the attack), moments before Sadat was assassinated. Sadat, Mubark, and Abu Ghazala are sitting together, shoulder to shoulder. About 40 people were killed and wounded in the attack, and yet neither Mubarak nor Abu Ghazala was wounded. (Mubarak claimed to have injured his thumb, and Abu Ghazala proffered a military cap with a bullet hole through it.) Author Chafetz alleges that it seems inconceivable that Mubarak and Abu Ghazala did not have advance notice. In other words, the intelligence services knew of the plot and allowed it to succeed. As a result, neither Mubarak nor Abu Ghazala was killed or injured, because they had time—just as the attack began—to quickly throw themselves down to the base of the five-foot red granite wall that separated the front-row dignitaries from the parade grounds full of passing soldiers and military equipment. By an "amazing" coincidence, several supersonic Mirage jets happened to be flying by overhead, distracting everyone in the reviewing stands and drowning out the machine-gun fire, just as the four assassin soldier launched their attack. Furthermore, Sadat's personal bodyguards did virtually nothing to stop it. This allowed one of the assassins to actually reach the granite wall, stand on tiptoes, and fire down onto Sadat's body with his machine gun.

Hours after the assassination, Mubarak, the presumptive president, eulogized Sadat in a nationally televised address, in which Mubarak stated that "all treaties and charters" would be honored. If Sadat's assassination was a conspiracy, then it can be inferred that he had to be sacrificed to preserve the Camp David Accords and peace in the Middle East. Which is exactly what occurred for the next three decades until Mubarak's ouster last year.

Following Sadat's death, Mubarak became the fourth president of Egypt, and the chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP). He was the longest serving Egyptian president, his term lasting 29 years.