Submitted by Fox First at Ten on June 19th
MSNBC - Former President Hosni Mubarak is "clinically dead" after he suffered
multiple strokes and his heart stopped, the Egyptian state news agency
MENA said late Tuesday.
Huge crowds gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square as the news spread.
Mubarak's
lawyers had earlier told NBC News that he was moved to a military
hospital from the prison hospital where he had been treated.
His
health has been deteriorating since 3 p.m. (9 a.m. ET), his lawyers told
NBC. He suffered two or three strokes and his heart had to be restarted
with a defibrillator, and he was on a respirator, they said.
Video on Hayat TV showed an ambulance taking Mubarak to Maadi military hospital.
"He is in really bad shape," a U.S. official told NBC News earlier.
An 18-day uprising ended Mubarak's 30-year rule on Feb. 11, 2011, sparking months of social unrest and political turmoil.
Speculation about Mubarak's health has swirled since he was jailed effectively for life on June 2 for failing to halt the killings of hundreds of the protesters who toppled him.
He had been moved to Tora prison hospital from a plush military hospital where he was held during the 10-month trial.
Critics had said his illness was being exaggerated to win public sympathy. Egypt's official news agency earlier this month denied reports that Mubarak had slipped into a coma.
Egypt's prison authority on June 11 approved a request to let Mubarak's eldest son, Alaa, who is being held at the jail pending trial, stay close to him in the prison hospital because of his deteriorating health, security sources said.
His youngest son, Gamal, once viewed as heir-apparent to the presidency and who is also detained pending trial, was moved closer to him earlier.
Mubarak's wife, Suzanne, and the wives of his two sons visited him earlier this month and demanded he be moved to a hospital outside prison.
This report from Carlen Goulash, NBC News Cairo producer, includes information from Reuters and The Associated Press.
Comments