Mubarak leaves jail but remains under house arrest

EGYPT’S Hosni Mubarak, who left jail for house arrest yesterday, enjoyed near absolute power for three decades as president before a 2011 uprising overthrew him.

The 85-year-old’s spectacular fall from grace sent shock waves across the Middle East and beyond when he announced his resignation on February 11 2011 after an 18-day popular revolt.

Just months later, in April, he was arrested and subsequently charged with various crimes, including corruption and inciting the deaths of at least 850 people killed during the uprising.

Last year, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Mubarak appealed, and a retrial was ordered.

His next hearing is scheduled for this Sunday with the case likely to drag on for months.

Yesterday, he was flown from prison by helicopter to a military hospital, where he will be held under house arrest, after he was cleared for conditional release while the trial continues.

The spectacle of the man who had dominated Egypt for so long appearing in the dock on a stretcher at his original trial gripped the nation. Mubarak was convicted for his role in the deaths of protesters and could have received the death penalty when the court handed down sentence on June 2 last year.

But the former president was instead handed a life sentence, before the trial was overturned on the basis of procedural errors.

Until antigovernment protests erupted on January 25 2011, Mubarak had seemed untouchable as president of the most pop- ulous nation in the Arab world, backed by the US and the military, from whose ranks he had emerged. He had survived 10 attempts on his life, most of them by Islamist militants, but in the end, it was a popular uprising that brought him down.

It was a blow Mubarak found hard to accept. Two months after his overthrow, Mubarak told panArab satellite channel Al-Arabiya that he and his family were the victims of “false claims that seek to ruin my reputation and challenge my integrity”.

After his life sentence, his health collapsed and the state news agency MENA even reported him clinically dead at one point as he lapsed into a coma. He recovered, but was reportedly deeply depressed by the election, as president later the same month of Mohamed Mursi, the candidate of his long-time foe the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mubarak himself rose to power unexpectedly, when president Anwar Sadat, who made history by signing a peace deal with Israel, was gunned down by an Islamist army officer at a military parade on October 6 1981.

He took office a week later and ruled without interruption until his overthrow.

Islamist militants were responsible for most of the attempts to kill Mubarak, including a failed bid to fire rockets at his plush Cairo residence and a plot to carbomb the presidential motorcade. In 1995, militants opened fire on his motorcade in Addis Ababa.

With his jet black hair, which he has maintained even in jail, Mubarak had a reputation for vigour and was once known to play squash almost daily.

But that image suffered in 2003 when he fainted while addressing parliament.

In 2004, he underwent surgery in Germany for a slipped disc, and he returned to Germany in March 2010 for the removal of his gall bladder and a growth on his small intestine. Mubarak, whose wife Suzanne is half Welsh, has always kept his private life a carefully guarded secret.

Mubarak’s ties with the US and Israel drew criticism from across the region, especially during the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon and Israel’s Gaza offensive in 200809.