Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Hosni Mubarak

History's first verdict on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was rendered late Tuesday night, Feb. 1, when thousands of protesters forced the autocrat to vow not to run for office again. The president, they chanted, had to go. On Friday, Feb. 11, after some prevarication, Mubarak appeared to have finally taken the point.
From police brutality to persecution of minorities, from the arrests of journalists to the suppression of political dissent, Mubarak's Egypt has been a textbook police state. For 30 years, anger and frustration brewed among his subjects, bottled up and sealed with fear.
Over the past three decades, Mubarak did not personally torture alleged criminals or beat protesters in the street. But as Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, told me from Cairo, Mubarak's repression was simply "delegated to the Ministry of Interior and various security services. At the end of the day, he's the final address for all this." As we bid farewell to a dictator, here's a look back at his ugly history of repression and cruelty...
@'FP'