Egypt’s ex-leader Mubarak free after years-long detention

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 has 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.”

With muted street reaction, his release underscored once again the failed aspirations of the uprisings that swept across the region in 2011.