Egyptian security officials say Mubarak’s condition has shown a “slight” improvement but that the ousted leader is refusing prison food.
The officials at Torah prison where Mubarak is serving his life sentence say the 84-year-old former president ate yogurt and drank juice on Wednesday and was being given liquids and vitamins intravenously.
The officials say Mubarak’s sons are by his side. The officials spoke on anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
Mubarak’s health has deteriorated since his incarceration on June 2, and he was defibrillated twice to revive his heart on Monday, a prison hospital source said.
“His condition is very critical,” Deeb had said. “I appeal through Agence France-Presse to all world leaders and NGOs: save Mubarak.”
An interior ministry source had told AFP news agency that Mubarak’s condition was “critical but stable”, as officials weighed transferring him to a military hospital in the capital.
Mubarak is currently being held in an intensive care wing of Torah prison on the outskirts of Cairo.
Prison authorities agreed on Monday to allow his son Alaa, also jailed in the same prison on corruption charges, to join him and his other son Gamal.
The state news agency, citing a security source in the Interior Ministry, said prison authorities approved the move in response to“deterioration in his health.”
Mubarak’s wife Suzanne and his two daughters-in-law were given special permission to visit him on Sunday following rumors that he had died in prison, state media reported.
His family has formally requested a transfer to a Cairo hospital, but such a move could unleash the anger of activists and protesters at a particularly sensitive time in the country.
Elections for Mubarak’s successor are just days away, a highly polarized contest between the ousted president’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohammed Mursi.
Authorities have neither accepted nor declined the request to transfer Mubarak, saying only that he will be “treated like all prisoners.”
“Moving him now is very sensitive, with the threat of protests in Tahrir and the elections coming up,” a security official said, referring to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, symbol of the 2011 uprising.
