Mubarak, Hosni

Mubarak, Hosni

Hosni Mubarak, 1982.

(credit: Barry Iverson/Gamma)

(born May 4, 1928, Al-Minufiyyah governorate, Egypt) President of Egypt (from 1981). He attended a Soviet air academy and, as air force commander (from 1972), planned Egypt's opening moves in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Named vice president in 1975, he became president on Anwar el-Sadat's assassination in 1981. He maintained relations with Israel while working to restore Egypt to its traditional position as the most influential of the Arab states. In the 1990s Mubarak's government faced a rise in domestic terrorism, and he survived several assassination attempts. In 2005 he easily won Egypt's first multicandidate presidential election.