ex-Egypt dictator Hosni Mubarak's health deteriorates

Security official says Mubarak has been put on life support system.

CAIRO: Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak was declared clinically dead after he was transferred to hospital from prison on Tuesday, state media reported, after his heart apparently stopped beating.

"Hosni Mubarak is clinically dead," the official MENA news agency reported. "Medical sources told MENA his heart had stopped beating and did not respond to defibrillation."

His doctors told MENA that the former dictator had suffered two strokes.

However, a security official said that Mubarak was not dead, and had been put on life support system.

Earlier, Mubarak, 84, had claimed that authorities “want to kill” him in jail as his health deteriorated, his lawyer told AFP on Monday.

“He says: ‘They want to kill me. Save me, Farid, find me a solution,” said Farid al-Deeb, his chief lawyer in the murder and corruption trial which ended this month with his sentencing.

Mubarak’s health has deteriorated since his incarceration on June 2, and he was defibrillated twice to revive his heart on Monday, a prison hospital source said.

“His condition is very critical,” Deeb said. “I appeal through Agence France-Presse to all world leaders and NGOs: save Mubarak.”

An interior ministry source had told AFP that Mubarak’s condition was “critical but stable”, as officials weighed transferring him to a military hospital in the capital.

The 84-year-old former strongman was sentenced to life behind bars for suppressing a revolt against his rule in early 2011 in which nearly 850 protesters were killed.

He is currently being held in an intensive care wing of Cairo’s Tora prison.