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Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the longtime leader of the country who was overthrown in the midst of an Arab Spring revolt, died Tuesday at age 91 in Egypt, state TV reported. Mubarak died at a Cairo hospital after going through surgery following health complications, state TV reported, according to The Associated Press and Reuters. The former U.S. ally and the autocratic leader, fought against Islamic militancy and maintained peace between Egypt, Israel and Palestinians within his nearly 30-year rule, before 18 days of street protests in 2011 resulted in his removal from office.

Military retaliation from Baghdad was the main administration concern following Saturday's strike on Iraq. Yet U.S. officials should start thinking seriously about the question of retaliation through terror. It is quite possible, for example, that there was a connection between Saddam and recent attempts to blow up Manhattan. It is quite possible that New York's terror is Saddam's revenge. Speculation about the responsibility for last week's bombing plot and the earlier World Trade Center bombing has focused on Iran, Sudan, and the fundamentalist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Much energy has been spent linking the terror to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet Saddam,...

Today the hot topic in the conservative blogsphere is the apparent return of Robert Malley. He was Obama’s senior foreign-policy adviser who had been caught meeting regularly with Hamas which Obama had pledged never to do and was subsequently thrown under the bus back in May of this year. Two days after the election he was dispatched by Obama to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Other reports have him leaving for the Middle East just hours after the election results. There is no confirmation from the Obama campaign on Malley but many sources are...

A man shot and killed after he crashed his car and struggled with an Ohio police officer was a 26-year-old college student and citizen of the United Arab Emirates, officials said on Tuesday. Saif Nasser Mubarak Alameri, a student at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, died from a gunshot wound to the head on Sunday and his death has been ruled homicide, the Summit County Medical Examiner's office said. Police officers responded to a call around 3 p.m. about an erratic driver on the Ohio Turnpike in Hudson, Ohio, 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Cleveland, police said in a...

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court confirmed a 20-year prison sentence against former president Mohamed Mursi on Saturday, judicial sources told Reuters. The sentence was for a conviction arising from the killings of protesters during demonstrations in 2012. It is the first of Mursi's four convictions to reach the end of the judicial process, and he cannot appeal further against it. Twenty-year jail sentences were also confirmed against other senior figures from the then-ruling Muslim Brotherhood, including Mohamed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian. The men were convicted in April 2015 on charges including kidnapping, torture and the killings of protesters during...

President Obama took the advice of “back-benchers” over experienced security experts to promote the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, creating condition for the usurpation of power by Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi: Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Fox News that President Barack Obama ignored the advice of his “entire national security team” during the Egyptian coup in 2011 that ousted Hosni Mubarak, the country’s former president. …Gates, who headed the Pentagon during the Egyptian coup, lamented that, while he and the rest of the president’s national security experts advised Obama to handle the situation in Egypt cautiously, the president chose...

Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the...

The Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera America were undone by their own hubris. There’s a lesson there, but Qatar’s arrogant rulers aren’t likely to learn it. When Al Jazeera America was announced, the Qatari propaganda network was riding high. Once known as a dump for Al Qaeda videos, the Arab Spring had allowed the House of Thani to project its power across the region, toppling governments and replacing them with its Muslim Brotherhood allies. Qatar had been notorious for its ties to Al Qaeda, but those connections had done little for the oil-rich oligarchy. The Muslim Brotherhood however handed Egypt...

A Cairo court sentenced Egypt’s deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak and his two sons to three years in prison on corruption charges on Saturday—a punishment that authorities may deem as having already been served but one which, if it withstands appeal, would officially establish Mubarak as a convicted criminal years after the 2011 popular uprising that toppled him. The case—dubbed the “presidential palaces” affair by the Egyptian media—was a retrial charging that Mubarak and sons embezzled millions of dollars’ worth of state funds over the course of a decade, diverting money meant to pay for renovating and maintaining presidential palaces to...

In a blunt assessment, President Obama’s first national security adviser told a private audience this week that there is a “chasm” between the United States and its Gulf Arab allies that has yet to heal since the White House very publicly ushered Egypt’s president out of power in February. Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, who served as national security adviser in 2009-10, told a private meeting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the United States’ Persian Gulf allies interpret the president’s handling of the Egyptian revolution as a sign that Washington will dump their monarchies or governments if enough...

NBC’s Richard Engel found the White House’s glowing tribute to King Abdullah ironic, since the late Saudi leader “could not stand President Obama.” After the 90-year-old monarch passed away Thursday evening, the Obama administration released a statement praising the long-time American ally. “I have always valued King Abdullah’s perspective,” the president wrote, “and appreciated our genuine and warm friendship.” But Engel said that King Abdullah “did not like President Obama. In fact, a lot of people I know that are quite close to the late King Abdullah said that the king could not stand President Obama, because the president was...

U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki was seemingly caught on a hot mic calling one of her prepared statements on one of America’s policies on Egypt “ridiculous” following a press conference. When reporters, including the Associated Press’ Matt Lee, pressed her to comment on the acquittal of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, she provided a pre-written response. “Generally, we continue to believe that upholding impartial standards of accountability will advance the political consensus on which Egypt’s long-term stability and economic growth depends,” she said. “But beyond that, I would refer you to the Egyptian government.” She refused to say anything...

US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki has been caught on a hot mic calling one of her prepared statements about the acquittal of Egypt’s ex-leader Hosni Mubarak “ridiculous.”

One person was killed in Cairo on Saturday night, in clashes that erupted after an Egyptian court dismissed a murder charge against former President Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising. The ruling enraged Mubarak’s opponents, with about 1,000 converging on a central Cairo square to denounce the government, according to the AFP news agency. A health ministry official said one person was shot dead after police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters, resulting in scattered clashes. Police arrested at least 100 protesters. Seven of Mubarak's security commanders, including former interior minister Habib al-Adly, had...

A Cairo judge capped a months long retrial by dismissing the death charges -- reversing the former strongman's convictions in 2012 -- and finding Mubarak not guilty of corruption.

An Egyptian court on Saturday dismissed murder charges against former president Hosni Mubarak in connection with the killing of protesters in the 2011 uprising that ended his nearly three-decade reign. The ruling marks another major setback for the young activists who spearheaded the Arab Spring-inspired uprising nearly four years ago -- many of whom are now in jail or have withdrawn from politics -- and will reinforce the perception that Mubarak's autocratic state remains in place, albeit led by a new president, former military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Saturday's verdict concludes Mubarak's retrial along with his two sons, his security chief...

Egypt’s deposed President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday denied that he ordered protesters killed during an uprising in 2011, in his first lengthy speech to a court as his year-old retrial draws to an end. The 86-year-old Mubarak was speaking from a gurney inside a cage that holds defendants, listing the achievements of his 29-year rule. He said he was not forced from power in 2011 but gave it up voluntarily so that Egypt would avert an “abyss.” “Mohammed Hosni Mubarak would never order the killing of protesters … or shedding the blood of Egyptians,” he said in an emotional plea...

Egypt’s ousted President Hosni Mubarak broke his leg at a Cairo military hospital on Thursday, where he is serving a three-year prison sentence in a corruption case, a security official said. The official said the 86-year-old Mubarak slipped in the bathroom and broke the upper part of his thigh bone, adding that he would need surgery. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media. …

Distancing herself from some of the Obama administration’s handling of the Arab Spring, Hillary Rodham Clinton says in her upcoming book that she pushed for Hosni Mubarak to initiate an orderly transition of power in Egypt but was overruled by President Barack Obama’s call for the strongman to stand down immediately. In her book “Hard Choices,” a copy of which was purchased by The Associated Press, Clinton describes an administration split during the frantic days of Arab protests in 2011. She includes herself among an old guard of cautious realists such as Vice President Joe Biden, national security adviser Tom...

Egypt’s new strongman drew up a blueprint for the army to seize power in case of a revolution against ex-president Hosni Mubarak as long ago as 2010, senior advisers have revealed. Abdulfattah el-Sisi, who won 97 percent of the vote in last week’s presidential election, was little known to either Egyptians or the outside world before his swift rise to power. […] Mr. Sisi was seen as Mr. (Mohammed) Morsi’s choice because of his well-documented religious piety. No Brotherhood supporter could have risen so high in the army, but a thesis that Mr. Sisi wrote in 2006 while on secondment...