Cairo: Jehan Sadat, 87, widow of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel, died in Egypt on Friday, the country’s state news agency MENA reported.
In recent weeks, the local media reported that Jehan had been in an Egyptian hospital and battling cancer. Last year, Jehan received medical treatment in the United States but shortly after she returned home, her condition had deteriorated, her family had told the local press. No further details about her illness were made available.
On Friday, President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s office mourned Jehan as a role model for Egyptian women, granted her a prestigious national award and announced the naming of a key highway in Cairo after her.
In August 1933, Jehan was born in Cairo to an Egyptian middle-class father and a British mother. In 1949, she was married to Anwar Sadat, a military officer at the time who later on served as Egypt’s president from 1970 until his assassination in 1981. The couple had given birth to three daughters, Noha, Gihan, Lobna and a son, Gamal.