Former Pakistan President Gen (Retd.) Pervez Musharraf Passes Away At 79

Pakistan’s former president General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf took his last breath on Sunday in a Dubai hospital, according to Pakistan’s Geo News.

The 79-year-old, former president, Musharraf was suffering from amyloidosis, a rare disease caused by a build-up of an abnormal protein called amyloid in organs and tissues throughout the body, the media report added.

Amid serious health conditions, the military ruler had been undergoing treatment at American Hospital Dubai.

Taking notes from his life, Musharraf was born on August 11, 1943, in Delhi. He assumed the post of Chief Executive after imposing martial law in the country in 1999 and served as the president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. The former president’s family moved from New Delhi to Karachi in 1947.

He joined the Pakistan Army in 1964 and was a graduate of the Army Staff and Command College, Quetta.

Pervez Musharraf: Architect of Kargil War

The retired general was the main architect of the Kargil War that took place months after then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed a historic peace accord with his Indian counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Lahore.

After his failed misadventure in Kargil, Musharraf deposed the then Prime Minister Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999 and ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008 in various positions. He was first the chief executive of Pakistan and later the President. In 2008, he also announced elections under domestic and international pressure, was forced to resign as president following the polls and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.

Musharraf’s All Pakistan Muslim League party

In 2010, he formed his own party, the All Pakistan Muslim League and declared himself the party President. He voiced his opinion of actively taking part in Pakistan’s politics sometime in the future. He returned to Pakistan in March 2013 to contest polls after living in self-exile for about five years but was hauled to court in different cases including the 2007 assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, treason under article 6 of the Pakistan constitution and murder of Bugti tribe chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

In 2019, Musharraf was sentenced to death in absentia by a special court which found him guilty of high treason, for imposing a state of emergency on November 3, 2007, by keeping the Constitution in abeyance. The judgement angered the country’s powerful Army which has ruled over Pakistan for most of the period since its existence. It was the first time a former top military official had faced such a sentence for treason in Pakistan. The death sentence was later annulled by the Lahore High Court.

Since 2016, he lived in Dubai. He has also been declared a fugitive in the Benazir Bhutto murder case and the Red Mosque cleric killing case.

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