Former army chief sworn in as president of Egypt

Egypt’s former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was sworn in yesterday as president for a four-year term, assuming the highest office of a deeply polarised nation that has been roiled by deadly unrest and an economic crisis since its 2011 uprising.

El-Sissi’s inauguration came less than a year after the 59-year-old career infantry officer ousted the country’s first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi.

El-Sissi took the oath of office before the Supreme Constitutional Court at the tribunal’s Nile-side headquarters in a suburb south of Cairo, the same venue where Morsi, now on trial for charges that carry the death penalty, was sworn in two years ago.