1920 - 1991
Egyptian military officer and politician.
Ali Sabri was educated at the Military Academy, taught at the Air Force Academy in 1949, and served as an air force officer. Though not a member of the Free Officers, he supported their movement and acted as liason to the U.S. embassy prior to the 1952 revolution in which the Free Officers overthrew King Farouk. Between 1957 and 1962, Sabri was minister of presidential affairs, giving him access to President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who appointed him to the Supreme Executive of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) in 1962, a position he held through 1965, at which time he was appointed secretary-general of the union. Sabri is well known in Egyptian politics as perhaps the most influential leftist. His tenure in the ASU is closely associated with Nasser's shift to the left in the early 1960s. As head of the ASU, Sabri sought to make it the leading political body in Egypt by subordinating the public sector, the bureaucracy, labor unions, and professional syndicates to its control. On the death of Nasser, Sabri was one of the most powerful men in Egypt. He was responsible for naming Anwar alSadat president, under the mistaken assumption that he could control Sadat. In May of 1971, Sabri and his supporters publicly broke with Sadat. Sadat responded by arresting Sabri for plotting a coup. Sabri was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to twenty-five years in prison. Sabri was released from prison in 1981.
Bibliography
Hinnebusch, Raymond A., Jr. Egyptian Politics under Sadat:The Post-Populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Waterbury, John. The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The PoliticalEconomy of Two Regimes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Wucher King, Joan. Historical Dictionary of Egypt. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984.
— DAVID WALDNER
