The Pakistani army and the family of former President Pervez Musharraf announced his death today, Sunday, at the age of 79, after a long illness.
The army's media office said - in a brief statement - that the senior military leaders "express their deepest condolences on the death of General Pervez Musharraf," and President Arif Alvi also offered condolences on his death.
The family of the former president, the Pakistani diplomatic mission in the UAE and Pakistani officials confirmed that he died this morning in a hospital in Dubai.
And the Pakistani channel "Geo News" reported that a private plane will return the body of the late general from the Emirates tomorrow, Monday.
According to what local media quoted from his family and diplomatic sources, Musharraf was undergoing treatment at the American Hospital in Dubai.
a rare disease
The late Pakistani general was suffering from amyloidosis, a rare disease that causes organ damage.
Earlier this month, his family said that he had been taken to hospital due to complications from his illness, noting that he was living in a difficult stage in which it was impossible to recover, as the body's organs were not functioning well.
General Pervez Musharraf led a coup against Nawaz Sharif in October 1999, after the then prime minister tried to remove him from the post of army chief, and on June 6, 2001 he appointed himself president of Pakistan after a popular referendum.
In 2008, he was forced to leave power less than a year after winning a second presidential term, after which he left the country for London, before returning to Pakistan in 2013 and facing the judiciary two years after an arrest warrant was issued against him in the context of the investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, wife of the Pakistani president. Preceded by Asif Ali Zardari.
Although he was facing charges including high treason for the 1999 coup he carried out, in 2016 he was allowed to leave Pakistan for treatment.
In 2019, a Pakistani court sentenced Musharraf to death on charges of high treason and undermining the constitution, in a precedent that is the first in the country's history, and at that time the Pakistani army expressed its sorrow at the verdict.
During his rule, which witnessed economic growth, and in the midst of his war against Al Qaeda and other armed groups, Benazir Musharraf was subjected to at least 3 assassination attempts, supported the war waged by the United States against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and sought to spread liberal values in conservative Pakistani society.