Mubarak released, back home

CAIRO — Far from the cameras that followed him closely over six years of legal wrangling, Egypt’s ousted President Hosni Mubarak quietly returned home to his family on Friday after winning acquittals and release from a Cairo hospital where he had been detained for years.

The 88-year-old onetime autocratic ruler now walks free, acquitted over his role in the killings of hundreds of protesters who defied his rule.

He captured the world’s attention when he stepped down in response to an 18-day uprising, and once again when he appeared — then jarringly — behind the bars of the defendant’s cage in a trial that media dubbed “the trial of the century.” Since Mubarak’s ouster, heavy-handed rule has returned to the country in full force, and its economy has tanked.

Mubarak left the Armed Forces Hospital in Cairo’s southern suburb of Maadi, where he has spent most of his detention since the 2011 revolt, and was driven in a motorcade to his home in the upscale Heliopolis district under heavy security, according to an Egyptian security official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Mubarak’s lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, told the Al-Masry al-Youm daily that the former president returned home with his sons, Alaa and Gamal, and that the entire family, including Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne, celebrated his return by having breakfast together.

Mubarak, who assumed Egypt’s highest office in 1981 following the assassination of Anwar Sadat, has spent virtually all the time since he was detained in hospitals due to poor health, according to his lawyer.