Mubarak slipping in, out of consciousness

CAIRO

Former President Hosni Mubarak now lives only on liquids and yogurt. His health is collapsed since June 2 conviction. EPA photo

Hosni Mubarak is slipping in and out of consciousness eight days after the ousted Egyptian leader was sent to prison to begin serving a life sentence, a security official said yesterday.

With rumors of the former president’s death spreading rapidly, authorities granted his wife, former first lady Suzanne Mubarak, and the couple’s two daughters-in-law special permission to visit him in Cairo’s Torah prison early that morning.

“The former president’s health is in decline, but now it’s stable in its deteriorated state,” the official said. Since his wife’s visit, Mubarak has suffered from an irregular heartbeat and required assistance in breathing.

The official told the Associated Press that the former president now lives only on liquids and yogurt. Mubarak’s health is reported to have collapsed since his June 2 conviction for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that overthrew him in 2011. His life sentence saw him transferred immediately to a prison hospital, instead of the military hospital and other facilities where he had been held since his April 2011 arrest. Authorities have turned down several requests by Mubarak’s family to transfer the ousted president back to a military facility, the official said.

‘Egypt has sold me’

In his last public appearance on June 2, the bedridden Mubarak sat stoned-faced in the courtroom cage. However, officials said that he broke into tears when he learnt that he will be transferred to Torah prison. It took officials hours to convince Mubarak to leave the helicopter that ferried him from the courthouse to the prison.

Media reports quoted Mubarak at the time as saying the military council who took over after his ouster had deceived him. “Egypt has sold me. They want me to die here,” he reportedly said. The verdict sparked a new wave of protests by tens of thousands of Egyptians who allege the verdict was determined by political pressure from the country’s military rulers, doing a favor for their former president.