Health of Mubarak worsens in prison

Hosni Mubarak's health has worsened, with doctors twice having to use a defibrillator on the imprisoned former leader, adding to the tumult in Egypt before this weekend's runoff election for president.

Mubarak, 84, slipping in and out of consciousness on Monday, was suffering from high blood pressure and breathing difficulties, and was in a deep depression, according to security officials at Torah prison where he is serving a life sentence. Doctors there could not find a pulse twice, and used the defibrillator, they said.

The deposed leader, who was being given liquids intravenously, also lost consciousness several times on Sunday.

His health crisis came at time of political anxiety in Egypt, with a former prime minister from the Mubarak government facing an Islamist in a showdown at the ballot box on Saturday and Sunday.

"He is causing everyone a headache," said Ahmed Badawi, a liberal activist who participated in last year's uprising that ousted Mubarak. "There are daily rumors that he died and where he is held is also a thorny issue. He is definitely feeding the nervousness we are all living in these days."

'They want to kill me'

Mubarak said the authorities "want to kill" him in jail as his health deteriorated, his lawyer said on Monday.

"He says: 'They want to kill me. Save me, Mr Farid, find me a solution,'" said Farid al-Deeb, Mubarak's chief lawyer in the murder and corruption trial which ended this month with his sentencing.

"His condition is very critical," Deeb said. "I appeal through Agence France-Presse to all world leaders and NGOs: save Mubarak."

An interior ministry source had told AFP that Mubarak's condition was "critical but stable", as officials weighed transferring him to a military hospital in the capital.

Prison authorities agreed on Monday to allow his son Alaa, also jailed in the same prison on corruption charges, to join him and his other son Gamal.

Mubarak's wife Suzanne and his two daughters-in-law were given special permission to visit him on Sunday following rumors that he had died in prison, state media reported.

His family has formally requested a transfer to a Cairo hospital, but such a move could unleash the anger of activists and protesters at a particularly sensitive time in the country.

Deeb said he had visited Mubarak on Saturday and found his medical wing under-equipped. "It is a scandal," he said.

Authorities have neither accepted nor declined the request to transfer Mubarak, saying only that he will be "treated like all prisoners".

"Moving him now is very sensitive, with the threat of protests in Tahrir and the elections coming up," a security official said, referring to Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, symbol of the 2011 uprising.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States did not have enough information on Mubarak to comment on his conditions.

"Frankly, we don't have any independent information," she told reporters.

AP-AFP