Abdel Fattah el-Sisi


Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has been serving as the 6th president of Egypt since 2014.
After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and 2012 election of Mohamed Morsi to the Egyptian presidency, the first democratic election in the history of the country, Sisi was appointed Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces in August 2012, replacing Hussein Tantawi. Following large scale protests against Morsi's presidency, Sisi led the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état, overthrowing Morsi on 3 July 2013. Demonstrations and sit-ins organized by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian democracy followed.
Under the command of Sisi, two camps of protesters were violently dispersed in Cairo: one at al-Nahda Square and a larger one at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, the Rabaa massacre, leading to international criticism. The dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins by the police and military forces resulted in the killing of about 3,000 civilians and the arrests of almost 19,000. Human Rights Watch describes the massacres as crimes against humanity.
After the 2014 presidential election, Sisi was sworn into office as President of Egypt in June 2014. Sisi faced minimal opposition in the 2018 and 2023 presidential elections, after other candidates were barred from running or boycotted the election due to repression. Most independent observers view Sisi as a dictator. He leads an authoritarian government and, according to Human Rights Watch, "relies on naked coercion and the military and security services as his main vehicles of control". Elements of his rule have been described as even more draconian than that of prior authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak, who was president from 1981 to 2011. In 2024, Egyptian citizens and activists organised an online "Dignity Revolution", resulting in widespread anti-regime protests. Sisi's government heavily cracked down on dissent in response, arbitrarily detaining hundreds. Analysts have described Egypt under Sisi as "The Sick Man of the Middle East" due to his fragile rule and Egypt's economic turbulence.

Early life and military education

Sisi was born in the Gamaleya neighbourhood of Historic Cairo on 19 November 1954 to Said Hussein Khalil al-Sisi and Soad Ibrahim Mohamed, both from Monufia Governorate. He grew up in Gamaleya, near al-Azhar Mosque, in a quarter where Muslims, Jews and Christians resided and in which he later recalled how, during his childhood, he had heard church bells and watched Jews flock to synagogue unhindered.
He later enrolled in the Egyptian Military Academy, and upon graduating he held [|various command positions] in the Egyptian Armed Forces and served as Egypt's military attaché in Riyadh. In 1987, he attended the Egyptian Command and Staff College. In 1992, he continued his military career by enrolling in the British Command and Staff College, and, in 2006, enrolled in the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Sisi was the youngest member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, serving as the director of military intelligence and reconnaissance department. He was later chosen to replace Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and serve as the commander-in-chief and Minister of Defense and Military Production on 12 August 2012.
Sisi's family origins were in the Monufia Governorate. He is the second eldest of eight siblings. His father, a conservative Muslim, who later had six additional children with a second wife, owned an antiques shop for tourists in the historic bazaar of Khan el-Khalili.
Sisi and his siblings studied at the nearby library at al-Azhar University. Unlike his brothers—one of whom is a senior judge, another a civil servant—Sisi went to a local army-run secondary school, where he developed a relationship with his maternal cousin, Entissar Amer. They were married upon Sisi's graduation from the Egyptian Military Academy in 1977. He attended the following courses:
Sisi received his commission as a military officer in 1977, serving in the mechanised infantry and specialising in anti-tank warfare and mortar warfare. He became Commander of the Northern Military Region-Alexandria in 2008 and then Director of Military Intelligence and Reconnaissance from 2010 until his appointment as Defense Minister by former President Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Sisi was the youngest member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt.
While a member of the Supreme Council, he made controversial statements regarding allegations that Egyptian soldiers had subjected detained female demonstrators to forced virginity tests. He is reported to have told Egypt's state-owned newspaper that "the virginity-test procedure was done to protect the girls from rape, as well as to protect the soldiers and officers from rape accusations". He was the first member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to admit that the invasive tests had been carried out.

Main command positions

  • Commander, 509th Mechanized Infantry Battalion
  • Chief of Staff, 134th Mechanized Infantry Brigade
  • Commander, 16th Mechanized Infantry Brigade
  • Chief of Staff, 2nd Mechanized Infantry Division
  • Chief of Staff, Northern Military Zone
  • Deputy Director, Military Intelligence and Reconnaissance Department
  • Director, Military Intelligence and Reconnaissance Department
Also reported is commander of the 23rd Mechanized Division, Third Field Army.

Minister of Defense

On 12 August 2012, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made a decision to replace the Mubarak-era Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, with then little-known Sisi. He also promoted him to the rank of colonel general. Sisi was then described by the official website of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Freedom and Justice Party as a "defense minister with revolutionary taste". Sisi also took the post of Minister of Defense and Military Production in the Qandil Cabinet.
Sisi was appointed as Minister of Defense on 12 August 2012. He remained in office under the new government formed after the deposition of Morsi, and led by Hazem al-Beblawi. He was also appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Egypt. On 27 January 2014, he was promoted to the rank of field marshal.

Coup d'état and Rabaa massacre

Mass demonstrations occurred on 30 June 2013 as Egyptians took to the streets to protest policies of the democratically-elected Morsi government. Soon afterwards, the Egyptian Army issued a 48-hour ultimatum which aired on television that gave the country's political parties until 3 July to meet their demands. The Egyptian military also threatened to intervene if the dispute was not resolved by then.
On 3 July 2013, the Egyptian Armed Forces initiated a coup d'état. The army then installed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court Adly Mansour as the interim head of state in his place until a new president could be elected, and ordered the arrest of many members of the Muslim Brotherhood on charges of "inciting violence and disturbing general security and peace". Sisi announced on television that the president had "failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people" and declared that the constitution would be temporarily suspended, which was met by acceptance from anti-Morsi protesters and condemnation from pro-Morsi supporters in Rabaa al-Adawiya.
On 24 July 2013, during a speech at a military parade, Sisi called for mass demonstrations to grant the Egyptian military and police a "mandate" to crack down on pro-democracy protestors. While supporters interpreted this to mean that Sisi felt the need of the people to prove to the world that it was not a coup but the popular will, the statement was seen by opponents as contradicting the military's pledges to hand over power to civilians after removing Morsi and as indicating an imminent crackdown against Islamists.
The reactions to Sisi's announcement ranged from open support from the interim Egyptian presidency and the Tamarod movement to rejection by much of civil society, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafi Nour Party, the Strong Egypt Party, the liberal April 6 Youth Movement and human rights groups.
During the dispersal process of anti-coup protestors, the Egyptian military under Sisi's command was involved in assisting the national police in dispersing two sit-ins held by anti-coup protestors in Rabaa el-Adaweya and Nahda squares. This action resulted in led to murder of over 900 protestors by Egyptian security forces in the Rabaa Massacre. Human Rights Watch described the sit-in dispersals as crimes against humanity and called them "one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history." In 2023, Amnesty International released stated that, "The 10-year anniversary of the Rabaa massacre is a stark reminder of how impunity for the mass killing of over 900 people has enabled an all-out assault on peaceful dissent, an erosion of any fair trial safeguards in the criminal justice system, and unspeakable cruelty in prisons over the past decade, Amnesty International said today."
Writing for British newspaper The Independent in August 2013, Robert Fisk described then-General Sisi as being at a loss, but that a massacre—as Fisk called the sit-in dispersal—would go down in history as an infamy. Writing for the American magazine Time, Lee Smith concluded that "Egypt's new leader unfit to rule", referring not to the actual head of government at the time, interim president Adly Mansour, but to Sisi.
In a file published by the State Information Services, the government explained the raids by stating that "police went on to use force dispersing the sit-in on 14 August 2013 with the least possible damage, causing hundreds of civilians and police to fall as victims, while Muslim Brotherhood supporters imposed a blockade for 46 days against the people in al-Nahda and Rabaa al-Adawiya squares under the name of sit-in where tens of protesters took to the street daily hindered the lives of the Egyptians, causing unrest and the death or injury of many victims as well as damage to public and private properties".
On 3 August 2013, Sisi gave his first interview since the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi. Speaking to The Washington Post, he criticised the US response, and accused the Obama administration of disregarding the Egyptian popular will and of providing insufficient support amid threats of a civil war, saying, "You left the Egyptians. You turned your back on the Egyptians and they won't forget that."
On the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October 2013, Sisi called for the "unification of Arabs" during a ceremony attended by the ministers of defence of the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan and Iraq. He declared the Egyptian army's solidarity with anti-Morsi rallies and commented that the relationship between the army and people was "hard to break", adding: "We would die before you would feel pain". He also compared the army to the Great Pyramid of Giza, saying that "it cannot be broken".