Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

Biography

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was born in 1954 in the Gamaleya quarter of old Cairo, where his father kept a shop in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. He graduated from the Egyptian Military Academy in 1977 and served in the mechanised infantry, later attending staff courses in Egypt and Britain and the United States Army War College in 2006, and serving as military attaché in Riyadh.

He commanded the Northern Military Region from 2008 and became director of military intelligence in 2010, which made him the youngest member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces during the 2011 revolution. In August 2012 President Mohamed Morsi appointed him defence minister and commander-in-chief.

After mass protests against Morsi, Sisi led the military's removal of the president on 3 July 2013. In August of that year security forces under his command broke up the pro-Morsi sit-ins at Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda squares, killing hundreds of protesters. He retired from the army and won the presidential election of May 2014 with an overwhelming official share of the vote.

As president since June 2014 he has led a strongly authoritarian government, with wide repression of opponents and the press, alongside large state-led infrastructure projects and recurring economic difficulties. He was re-elected in 2018 and 2023 against little or no real opposition and chaired the African Union in 2019–2020.