Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
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Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has been serving as the sixth and current 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.