What’s next if Mubarak is released,
Generals will gauge likely public reaction if former dictator is released, and billions from Saudis, UAE may influence decision
When it comes to the art of renewal, former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak could probably teach a phoenix a lesson or two.
Either that or an anonymous Egyptian judge has blundered very badly and Mubarak won’t be emerging from prison any day now, not just alive but free. It depends on whom you ask. “It could just be some over-empowered judge . . . who’s a Mubarak loyalist,” says Janice Stein, director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. “The courts are still largely dominated by Mubarak-friendly judges.
“That, to me, is the most likely explanation,” she says. “I can’t think of a more unfortunate time to release Mubarak.”
She’s referring to reports from Cairo suggesting the 85-year-old former dictator may soon be freed from detention after spending more than two years behind bars for failing to prevent the killing of some 900 Egyptian civilians during the 2011uprising against his rule, an uprising that eventually prevailed.
When he was spirited away to prison in a helicopter that April, Mubarak — who had ruled Egypt with an iron fist for two decades — was so sickened by his head-spinning fall from power and grace that he stubbornly refused to leave the aircraft. Later, his family and closest confidants insisted he was near death, owing to a heart ailment.
But more than two years later, Mubarak is not only among the living but may soon be a free man, too, with a fighting chance of restoring what once seemed a reputation bloodied beyond repair.
“He will be rehabilitated in society in his lifetime,” predicts Jabeur Fathally, a professor of international law at the University of Ottawa and a Middle East expert. “That’s the only thing the military can do for him.”
Fathally said Egypt’s generals — recently restored to power after overthrowing Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last month — will likely spend the next few days gauging public reaction to the prospect of Mubarak’s release. Only then will they decide what to do.
He suspects they’ll go ahead and set him free.
“It’s a question of money,” Fathally says. “Saudi Arabia and the (United) Arab Emirates are ready to help the (Egyptian) regime with billions of dollars.”
But there are conditions, and Mubarak’s liberty may well be one of them.
“There is a lot of pressure from Saudi Arabia, from the Emirates, from Kuwait to release Mubarak. He is their old ally.”
A strong-arm leader who long served as a bulwark against Islamist extremism in the Arab world’s most populous state, Mubarak was a loyal U.S. ally and observed the complicated terms of his country’s “cold peace” with neighbouring Israel. To maintain his grip on domestic power, he curtailed individual freedoms and operated a pervasive system of informers, secret police, prisons and torture chambers.
Egyptians in their millions cheered his ouster and subsequent incarceration during the early days of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. From a distance, it seems difficult to think they would now be anything but horrified by the prospect of his freedom, but many Egyptians are probably making more gut-wrenching calculations.
“As the French say, they are between a pestilence and a disease,” says Fathally. “They have to choose the less bad disease.”
After a year of being governed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a large number of secular or Christian Egyptians and many moderate Muslims seem to be siding with the army, now led by Gen. AbdelFattah el-Sissi, as their only defence against Islamist rule.
“They will not be happy that Mubarak is released,” says Fathally, who’s originally from Tunisia. “But they will not show their opposition violently, I’m quite sure.”
As for supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, they would be furious if Mubarak were released, especially with some of their own leaders in detention.
But after last month’s coup and hundreds of fatalities at the hands of the army and the police, Egyptian Islamists are probably about as enraged as they can get. Mubarak’s release might not make much difference.
If he is freed — and that is by no means assured — Fathally says Mubarak’s future would likely involve retirement in a grandly appointed villa somewhere in a dictator-friendly Arab state rather than a return to active politics at home.
“He will fly to Saudi Arabia or the Emirates,” he says. “It’s over for him, for sure.”