Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is hospitalised and his recovery is not possible, his family said on Friday.

In a tweet posted from the retired general’s Twitter account, his family said that Musharraf has been hospitalised for the last three weeks due to complications from amyloidosis, a rare disease in which a protein named amyloid builds up in a person’s organs and interferes with their functioning. Amyloid is not found in humans but can be formed from various types of proteins.

His family said that his organs were malfunctioning. “Pray for ease in his daily living,” they added.

The family also denied reports that Musharraf was on ventilator support. Several social media posts and some media publications had reported that the former dictator has died.

Musharraf had gone to the United Arab Emirates in 2016 for medical treatment but did not not return, reported The Express Tribune. He wielded absolute power after he took control of Pakistan in a military coup in 1999.

Musharraf served as Pakistan’s president from 2001 to 2008. He was given the death penalty in 2019 after the court found him guilty of treason.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had opened the case against Musharraf for imposing a state of emergency, suspending the Constitution and detaining senior political leaders and judges in November 2007. The case had been pending in court since December 2013.

In 2017, a special anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had declared Musharraf as an absconder in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case and ordered the authorities to seize his property. It had acquitted five others and sentenced two senior police officers to 17 years in prison.

Bhutto was the Pakistan People’s Party chief and the country’s 11th prime minister. At the time of her death, she was making a bid for her third term as prime minister. She was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb attack during an election campaign event on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi. Musharraf was the president at the time.

Musharraf, on several occasions, had also called for separating Kashmir from India.

In 2017, he had described the Laskhar-e-Taiba as a “great non-governmental organisation” that had done good work in Kashmir. He had even said that he was open to forming an alliance with the terror outfit.

After India bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories and revoked the special status given to the erstwhile state under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in 2019, Musharraf had said that the Pakistani Army was ready to give a befitting reply.