Pakistan’s former president General Pervez Musharraf has died at the age of 79, an official has said.
He was the military ruler who seized power in a bloodless coup and later led a reluctant Pakistan into aiding the US war in Afghanistan against the same Taliban fighters his nation murkily backed even as Islamic militants twice targeted him for assassination.
Gen Musharraf, a former special forces commando, became president through the last of a string of military coups that hit Pakistan after its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India.
He ruled the nuclear-armed state after his 1999 coup through tensions with India, an atomic proliferation scandal and an Islamic extremist insurgency.
He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment.
Later in life, Gen Musharraf lived in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid criminal charges, despite attempting a political comeback in 2012.
His family announced last June that he had been in hospital for weeks while suffering from amyloidosis, an incurable condition that sees proteins build up in the body’s organs.
Shazia Siraj, a spokeswoman for the Pakistani consulate in Dubai, confirmed his death and said diplomats were providing support to his family.
