An official has confirmed that former Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf has passed away at the age of 79 (11 August 1943 – 5 February 2023)
A statement from the country’s army confirmed the former leader’s death in Dubai from an extended illness. He served as president between 2001 and 2008.
A former special forces commando, Gen. Musharraf became president of Pakistan in the latest of a series of military coups that occurred after Pakistan’s establishment amid the brutal 1947 partition of India.
After taking power in a coup in 1999, he oversaw the nuclear-armed state as it endured tense relations with India, a nuclear proliferation crisis, and an Islamic extremist uprising.
He was on the front lines of the war between militant Islamist’s and the West, having survived multiple attempts on his life. Although Islamic extremists attempted to kill him on two separate occasions, he was the military ruler who took power in a bloodless coup and after 9/11 led a reluctant Pakistan into assisting the US “war on terror,” in Afghanistan against the same Taliban rebels his nation murkily backed.
He lost an election in 2008 and fled the country six months later.
After returning in 2013 to run for office, he was promptly arrested and disqualified. He was found guilty of high treason and given the death penalty without ever having met the accused, but his conviction and sentence were overturned in a little over a month.
The threat of impeachment led to his resignation in 2008.
As time went on, Gen. Musharraf went into self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid criminal charges. However, he made a comeback to politics in 2012.
In June of last year, his loved ones shared the news that he had been hospitalised for weeks due to amyloidosis, an incurable disease in which proteins accumulate in vital organs.
The Pakistani consulate in Dubai’s spokeswoman, Shazia Siraj, confirmed his death and said officials were consoling his family.
