Official: Mubarak is critical

Associated Press

CAIRO

Hosni Mubarak is slipping in and out of consciousness eight days after the ousted Egyptian leader was sent to prison to begin serving a life sentence, a security official said Sunday.

With rumors of the former president’s death spreading rapidly, authorities granted his wife, former first lady Suzanne Mubarak, and the couple’s two daughters-in-law special permission to visit him in Cairo’s Torah prison early Sunday.

Mubarak’s health is reported to have collapsed since his June 2 conviction for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that overthrew him in 2011.

His life sentence saw him transferred immediately to a prison hospital, instead of the military hospital and other facilities where he had been held since his April 2011 arrest.

Meanwhile, Egyptian liberals walked out of a meeting Sunday to select members of a panel to write the country’s new constitution, charging that Islamists were trying to take seats allocated for secular parties.

The walkout could throw the writing of the constitution, which would lay out the powers of the presidency, into further disarray at a time when uncertainties mar both the course of the presidential runoff election next weekend and the legality of parliament.