CAIRO - Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons along with ex-interior minister Habib Adli and six police officers were set to receive their verdicts in Cairo on Saturday. The following is a brief review of Mubarak's life and career.

Mubarak was born on May 4, 1928 in a lower middle class family in the village of Kafr el-Moseilha in the Nile delta province of Menoufia.

A video grab shows former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak sitting inside a cage in a courtroom during his verdict hearing in Cairo, Egypt, on June 2, 2012. Deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment on Saturday. [Photo/Xinhua]

After joining the air force in 1950, Mubarak moved up the ranks as a bomber pilot and instructor and then in leadership positions after earning nationwide fame as commander of the air force during the 1973 Middle East war.

Mubarak became the country's president seven days after his predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Muslim extremists at a military parade on October 6, 1981, for signing a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Mubarak, sitting next to Sadat, escaped with only a minor hand injury.

His foreign policy was generally characterized as peaceful and he remained a strong ally of the United States, carving out a niche as a major mediator in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Mubarak also engineered Egypt's return to the Arab field in the 1980s after nearly a decade of isolation over the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, by building a relationship with Saddam Hussein, Iraq's influential president at the time.

Under Mubarak, Egypt backed Saddam in Iraq's war with Iran, but in 1990, he sided with the US-led coalition to oppose Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Also under him, the Sinai Peninsular resort of Sharm el-Sheikh has become a common venue for international peace negotiations.

In 1999, Mubarak agreed to pump natural gas to Israel and the Palestinian territories, which was described by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as a "pipeline of peace."

During the early years of his reign, Mubarak won approval by keeping Egypt free of the grip of Islamic extremism by strongly putting down the Muslim militant insurgency. Later in the 1990s, Mubarak fought back hard against another resurgence of Muslim militants who attacked both foreign tourists and Egyptian civilians.

However, his conduct of fighting Islamic militants at the expense of personal freedoms and his tight governing style, along with the economic stagnation and widespread corruption under his rule, dented his popularity.

He maintained the emergency law, which was imposed after Sadat's assassination, allowing the arrest of civilians without warrants. The law was extended for another two years in 2010.

He allowed multi-party elections for the first time in 2005, in which his National Democratic Party won comfortably over the second-placed Muslim Brotherhood, a party that had to run independent candidates because it was banned.

And due to his peaceful policy with Israel, his efforts to tame the Islamic extremist and his grip on power, he and his government became frequent targets of domestic opposition. Mubarak survived 10 attempts on his life during his 30 years in reign.

In 1995, he escaped an assassination attempt at an African unity summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

Mubarak's health was rumored to be failing in recent years. And his relatively liberal economic policies only trickled down to a handful of people, particularly those in the real estate sector. Millions of people remain unemployed and poverty is still a reality of daily life for many Egyptians.

On top of these, the quick rise through the ruling party of his son Gamal, widely speculated to be groomed to be his successor, also caused great domestic anxiety in recent years.

On Jan 25, thousands of Egyptian protesters took to the streets in an unprecedented demonstration against Mubarak and the government.

Mubarak took a series of measures to cool the anger, including sacking Ahmed Nazif's government, naming former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as Egypt's vice president, and delegating some of his powers to the vice president, but all these failed to appease the protesters, who dismissed the steps as "always late" and insisted on his stepping down.

Mubarak initially responded to protests by saying that he would not seek another term, and his son Gamal would not run for presidential elections either.

On Feb 11, 2011, he was forced to resign and handed over power to the armed forces after 18 days of mass protests against him.

On April 13, he was detained along with his two sons for ordering the use of lethal forces against protesters and corruption. From then on, Mubarak was held in custody at Sharm el- Sheikh International Hospital.

On June 1, Egypt's top prosecutor announced August 3 as starting date for his trial.

On July 26, Mubarak's chief doctors said he had refused to eat for four days.

On July 30, Chief Justice of Cairo Court of Appeals changed the trial site to the Police Academy in Cairo for security reasons.

On August 3, Mubarak along with his two sons, Adli and six police officers were tried in Cairo Police Academy for the first time. The businessman Hussein Salem was tried in absentia. Mubarak denied all charges against him during the trial.

On August 15, the trial of Mubarak resumed at the Police Academy in Cairo. Clashes between supporters and opponents of Mubarak erupted outside the academy as the trial started.

On Sept 5, Mubarak appeared on the court for the third time. Clashes erupted both in and outside the courtroom, leaving at least 10 people injured.

Two days later, the ex-president's trial resumed again during which the presiding judge Ahmed Refaat decided to summon Marshal Tantawi, head of Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to testify.

On Sept 24, Tantawi made his testimony claiming that the Egyptian Army didn't receive any order to shoot the protesters during the massive protest against Mubarak.

On Jan 5, 2012, the Cairo Criminal Court continued the trial of Mubarak and ten others, with prosecutors demanding the death penalty for Mubarak over the killing of protestors.

On Feb 22, presiding Judge Ahmed Refaat set June 2 as the date to deliver the verdict for Mubarak, his two sons, Adli and his six aides.

On May 25, Egypt's General Prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmoud decided to refer Mubarak's sons Gamal and Alaa and seven others to a criminal court over stock exchange manipulation.