Mubarak wishes he had been free to vote for Al-Sisi

Ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has said that he supports Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi as president. He insisted that if he had been free during the election process, he would have been the first to vote for the ex-general.

Mubarak made his comments during an interview with Kuwaiti journalist Fajr Al-Said. She said that the ousted president spoke about Al-Sisi’s claim that the army would defend any Arab country which threatens Egypt. This, confirmed Mubarak, is the ideology of the Egyptian armed forces.

Al-Said apparently expressed her surprise that Mubarak referred to the former defence minister as “President Al-Sisi” and repeated the latter’s military boast. “As I expected,” she wrote, “he replied angrily: ‘What did you expect that I would call him? Is he not the president of Egypt and am I not an Egyptian citizen?'”

According to the Kuwaiti journalist, Mubarak believes that if saying “President Al-Sisi” is “heavy on anyone’s tongue”, then that person must not be an Egyptian. “We swear loyalty to the country,” he told her, “and Al-Sisi won by the will of the Egyptians of which I am one.”

When Al-Said suggested that he would have been in Tahrir Square if he had been free on 30 June 2013, Mubarak replied: “I also would have been out on 26 July to authorise Al-Sisi to fight terrorism.”