Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

Abd el-Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian officer and politician and the sixth and current president of Egypt. He took office on 8 June 2014, after leading, as defence minister, the removal of President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, and was re-elected in 2018 and 2023. ^{1 2}

El-Sisi was born in the Gamaleya district of Cairo on 19 November 1954, to a family originally from Monufia Governorate. He graduated from the Egyptian Military Academy in 1977 as an infantry officer and pursued advanced military study at the Egyptian Command and Staff College with honours, at the British Joint Services Command and Staff College in 1992 (master's in military science), and at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 2006 (master's in military science). ¹

El-Sisi served in the mechanized infantry, commanding a mechanized infantry brigade and then the 23rd Mechanized Infantry Division in Suez; he served for a time as a military attaché in Saudi Arabia, then as chief of staff of the Northern Military Region and director of military intelligence and reconnaissance. On 12 August 2012 President Mohamed Morsi appointed him minister of defence and commander-in-chief, succeeding Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and promoted him to colonel general. ¹

Following mass protests against the rule of President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, el-Sisi issued a 48-hour ultimatum in the army's name, then announced on 3 July 2013 the removal of Morsi and the suspension of the constitution; the chief justice, Adly Mansour, took office as interim president. In August 2013 security forces dispersed the pro-Morsi sit-ins at Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda; Human Rights Watch estimated some 800 or more killed, possibly more than 1,000. El-Sisi was promoted to field marshal in January 2014, then resigned from the armed forces and ran for president. ¹

El-Sisi was sworn in as president of Egypt on 8 June 2014, and his forces fought the Islamic State's Sinai Province insurgency in North Sinai. He was re-elected in 2018; a 2019 constitutional referendum lengthened presidential terms and allowed him to run again, and he won the 2023 election and was sworn in for a third term on 2 April 2024. His rule's plans include vast construction projects, most prominently a new administrative capital east of Cairo. ¹

This museum does not adopt observers' judgements on el-Sisi's rule; it attributes positions to their holders. The English article reports that most independent observers view him as a dictator leading an authoritarian government, that human rights in Egypt deteriorated sharply under him, that security forces carried out mass killings of protesters in 2013 and thousands of arrests, and that elections under him were not free or fair. It also records that his supporters point to stability after the turmoil of 2011–13 and to major infrastructure projects. His public speeches repeatedly call for a "religious revolution" to renew religious discourse and confront extremist thought — a public political position attributed to him here, not evidence of a personal school affiliation. ¹

El-Sisi married Entissar Amer in 1977 and has three sons and one daughter; this museum publishes no family detail beyond what understanding his work needs. ¹

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