A Wall Street Journal Roundup

CAIRO—Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was moved out of prison to a military hospital late Tuesday after the 84-year-old ousted leader suffered a stroke and his condition rapidly deteriorated, officials said, adding a new element of uncertainty days after the country celebrated its first free election to elect his successor.
Mr. Mubarak's condition took a sharp turn for the worse Tuesday evening, the state news agency MENA reported, and officials transferred him from Torah Prison to the nearby Maadi military hospital—the same one where his predecessor Anwar Sadat was declared dead more than 30 years ago after being gunned down by Islamic militants.
Egypt's Strongman: A Timeline

A look back at the career of Mr. Mubarak, who was born in 1928.


Mr. Mubarak suffered a stroke and is suffering a "fast deterioration of his health," MENA said. Earlier, it said, his heart stopped and doctors had to use a defibrillator, and prison officials said he lost consciousness. TV images showed a convoy of ambulances and military vehicles transferring Mr. Mubarak from Torah Prison to nearby Maadi Hospital in a suburb south of Cairo.
U.S. officials said they had knowledge that Mr. Mubarak was critically ill, but couldn't confirm reports that he has been declared "clinically dead."
A lawyer for Mr. Mubarak denied reports of his death on Egyptian TV.
The developments add further layers to what is threatening to become a new chapter of unrest and political power struggles in Egypt, 16 months after Mr. Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising demanding democracy.
Moving Mr. Mubarak out of prison is likely to further infuriate many in the public, where there is a widespread suspicion that security and military officials sympathetic to their old boss are giving him preferential treatment—so much so that some Egyptians dismiss repeated reports of his faltering health as a pretext for taking him out of prison.
Since June 2, Mr. Mubarak has been serving a life sentence at Cairo's Torah Prison for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the 18-day uprising against his rule last year. The verdict against him has already been a spark for protests—thousands massed in Tahrir Square when the court acquitted him and his sons on separate corruption charges and cleared several top security chiefs on the protester killings.