Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is seen on a stretcher looking on from behind the bars of a cage inside the court room during his trial at the Police Academy in Cairo, in this April 13 2013 file photo.
The U.S. plotted his ouster, Jews are a danger to Egypt and red meat is bad for you; these are just some of the beliefs expressed by former Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak in recordings secretly made by his doctor, the New York Times reports. The recordings were secretly made over a period of several months earlier this year and only came to light in Egypt last week when the doctor responsible was called to testify about them.
In a series of extraordinarily candid conversations, Mubarak, who was ousted after mass protests in 2011, holds forth on a wide range of subjects, including his own removal from power, which he blames on his ostensible ally, the United States.
“How did the revolution start?” he said. “The Americans worked on it since, 2005, and I had a feeling then.”
In the recordings, Mubarak boasts about using Israel’s influence in the U.S.—Mubarak’s regime was friendly with the Israelis—to steer policy in favor of Egypt and he expresses pride in his three-decade-long term as Egypt’s autocrat. He also admits to holding to a number of conspiracy theories now reportedly in wide circulation in Egypt. Mubarak accuses his successor, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, of being dependent on Qatar, an oil rich ally of both the US and the Brotherhood that, he said, would bring American Jews into Egypt. “All will have American and Jewish passports, they will start projects and I don’t know what, and it will be worse.”
Mubarak is reportedly suing his doctor for surreptitiously recording him.