Pervez Musharraf: After a long bout of serious illness, former Pakistan President and Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf passed away on February 5, 2024, at the American Hospital located in Dubai after his many years of self-imposed exile. Parvez Musharraf age was 79 years.
There is no official information on whether his body will be brought back to his home country, though his family has been trying to bring him back home since last year.
Mr. Musharraf’s organs were malfunctioning due to an ailment amyloidosis. This disease affects connective tissues and organs, inhibiting normal functioning and it is a rare disease caused by the build-up of the abnormal protein amyloid in tissues and organs throughout the body.
Facing charges back home for the assassination o former PM Benazir Bhutto in the year 2007, Mr. Musharraf has been living in Dubai for the past eight years. Earlier, he had expressed his desire to spend the “rest of his life” in his home country Pakistan and wanted to return to Pakistan as early as possible.
Musharraf became the tenth president of Pakistan after a successful bloodless military coup in the year 1999. He served as the 10th CJCSC (Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of Pakistan) during 1998-2001 and the 7th top general from 1998-2007.
The former president was known as the architect of the Kargil war, who ordered his soldiers to enter India o cut off Leh from Srinagar. In that Kargil war, Pakistani soldiers, whose presence he denied, were decimated in the high mountains of Kargil. It was a catastrophic military failure for Musharraf, who had pushed forward with the plan by keeping his Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif mostly in the dark. Unbelievably, two years after Kargil, Mr. Musharraf emerged stronger than ever.
With the support of his Army, Mr. Musharraf appointed himself President of Pakistan in the year 1999.
Born in 1943, in New Delhi, Mr. Musharraf was four years old when his parents moved to the newly-created country Pakistan. His mother was a teacher, while his father served in the foreign ministry.
At the age of 18, he joined the army and went on to lead an elite commando unit and then rose to become its chief. He took power into his hands by ousting the then Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.
In December 2019, a special court in Pakistani sentenced General Pervez Musharraf in absentia to death for suspending the country’s constitution in the year 2007 but he challenged the order and in January 2020, the Lahore High Court invalidated the death sentence and held the earlier trial to be against the constitution.
