Gamal Abdel Nasser

Gamal Abdel Nasser founded the secret Society of Free Officers in 1942 and led the 1952 coup that ended Egypt's monarchy, becoming prime minister in 1954 and president in 1956. He nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and became the leading voice of pan-Arabism, most concretely in the 1958 union of Egypt and Syria as the United Arab Republic, which Syria left in 1961. His government also banned opposition parties and jailed members of the Muslim Brotherhood, running an extensive internal security apparatus against political dissent until his death on 28 September 1970.