Mubarak taken off life support Hosni Mubarak was reported on Wednesday to be off life support with his heart and other vital organs functioning, although he remained in a coma, according to security officials quoted by the Associated Press. News of the ousted Egyptian president's deteriorating health - and of his transferral from a prison cell to the relative comfort of an upscale Cairo hospital - raised new concerns of another potentially destabilising development as the election process reaches a chaotic conclusion. The success of Egypt's transition to democracy has been cast into doubt after the ruling military council's appropriation earlier this week of vast powers in what some have described as a "soft coup." The reports about Mr Mubarak began to surface on Tuesday night as crowds filled Cairo's Tahrir Square to celebrate what they believed to be a victory by the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi in presidential elections held over the weekend. But with the rival campaign of Mr Mubarak's final prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, also declaring victory, uncertainty has gripped the country as it awaits official results expected on Thursday. The former president was transferred to a military hospital from Cairo's Tora prison late on Tuesday after his heart stopped. State media reported that he was "clinically dead" having suffered a stroke and that doctors had been unable to revive him. However, security officials later said the former president was not dead and that he had been placed on life support. Mr Mubarak, 84 this month, began a life sentence in prison after a Cairo criminal court found him guilty of "failing to prevent" the killings of hundreds of protesters, during last year's popular uprising in Egypt which forced him out of office, handing power to the military council.