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Free Officers Movement

In Egypt, the clandestine revolutionary Free Officers Movement (Arabic: حركة الضباط الأحرار) was composed of young junior army officers committed to unseating the Egyptian monarchy and its British advisors. It was founded by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in the aftermath of Egypt's sense of national disgrace from the War of 1948.

Description

Nasser formed a coordinating committee (1949), of which he was acclaimed head (1950). The Free Officers Committee enlisted General Muhammad Naguib as a public figurehead in preparation for the successful coup of July 23, 1952. The nine men who had constituted themselves as the Committee of the Free Officers Movement and led the 1952 Revolution were Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, Major Abdel Hakim Amer, Lieutenant Colonel Anwar El-Sadat, Major Salah Salem, Major Kamal ad Din Husayn, Wing Commander Gamal Salem, Squadron Leader Hassan Ibrahim, Major Khalid Mohieddin, and Wing Commander Abd al Latif al Baghdadi. Major Hussein Al Shafei and Lieutenant Colonel Zakaria Mohieddin joined the committee later.

Similar movements were organized by other Arab politicians seeking to mimick Nasser's ascent. For example, Libyan president Muammar al-Gaddafi used a similar group to overthrow the Libyan King Idris in 1969, and the leaders of the Syrian Ba'ath Party used a similar group to overthrow the Nasser organized union between Egypt and Syria (see United Arab Republic) in 1961. In Saudi Arabia during the 1960s the Saudi Prince Talal used a similar idea, the Free Princes Movement in an unsuccessful effort to overthrow his country's conservative monarchy. He was exiled to Egypt as a result and was given asylum by Nasser. The Free Officers Movement can be seen in context in the entries for Nasser and Naguib. The anniversary of their coup is now commemorated as Revolution Day, an annual public holiday in Egypt on July 23. The name was consciously assumed by opposition leaders in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, led by Brigadier-General Najib al-Salihi, who signed a confederation agreement with the Assyrian National Congress on June 15, 2002. A faction of the Free Officers led a revolution in Iraq in 1958 in which King Faisal (cousin of King Hussein of Jordan) was brutally murdered. This coup was due to Nasser's anger over the formation of the Arab Federation between Iraq and Jordan a few months earlier.