Appointed head of the Egyptian air force in 1972, Mubarak became Vice-President in 1975 and succeeded President Sadat following the latter’s assassination. Although he did much to establish closer links between Egypt and other Arab nations, including distancing himself from Israel when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, he risked division by aligning Egypt against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War of 1991. After the resurgence of militant Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt in 1992, Mubarak’s National Democratic Party government adopted extremely harsh measures to suppress activists. In 2011 large demonstrations inspired by the Arab Spring led him to resign as president, and in 2012 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in the deaths of some demonstrators. However, a retrial was ordered and he was found not guilty in 2014. Egypt’s highest court then ruled that Mubarak should stand trial again; in March 2017, he was cleared of all charges and released from prison.