CAIRO (AP) – Hussein Tantawi, the
Egyptian general who took charge of the country when longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down amid the 2011 uprising, died on Tuesday, Egypt’s presidency said. He was 85.
Field Marshal Tantawi, Mubarak’s defense minister for some 20 years, chaired the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that took power after Mubarak’s ouster. He was known to be unquestioningly loyal to the former president, and oversaw a crackdown on protesters that continued under Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt’s current president. El-Sissi’s government has since rolled back many of the freedoms won in 2011.
Born in October 1935, Tantawi, who suffered from age-related health problems in recent months, died in a hospital in Cairo, according to a person close to his family, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
His death came 19 months after Mubarak died in a Cairo military hospital in February last year.
Tantawi ran Egypt for 17 months starting from Feb. 11, 2011, when Mubarak stepped down, until the election of President Mohammed Morsi in June 2012.
After a short honeymoon, relations grew increasingly hostile between the ruling generals and the pro-democracy movement that had led the 18-day uprising against Mubarak.
In one of the most violent incidents, in October 2011, military armored vehicles ran over protesters participating in a sit-in in front of the state television headquarters, killing several beneath their wheels. This marked the beginnings of a fierce campaign to crush dissent, resulting in the death of dozens at the hands of security forces in street skirmishes in the following months and the arrest of hundreds, many of them civil society leaders.