Pakistan’s ex-president passes away

Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf has died after a prolonged illness at a hospital in Dubai, Al Jazeera reports, citing military sources.

Musharraf, aged 79, a four-star general, ruled Pakistan for nearly a decade after seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

The former general was suffering from amyloidosis – a rare disease that causes organ damage. He had long been bedridden and wheelchair-bound.

Musharraf, a former special forces commando, became president through the last of a string of military coups that roiled Pakistan since its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India.

He ruled the nuclear-armed state after tensions with India, the War on Terror and an armed insurgency that left thousands of people dead. He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.

Musharraf’s political party, launched in 2010, failed to win any significant seats in two subsequent general elections. He chose to live in self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates after he was charged with treason in 2014.

In 2019, a court sentenced him to death in absentia for the 2007 imposition of emergency rule but the verdict was later overturned.

Musharraf is survived by his wife Sehba and two children.