Court clears way for Mubarak return
CAIRO: Egypt’s top appeals court cleared former president Hosni Mubarak of any responsibility for the killing of hundreds of people during the 2011 protests that ended his 30-year rule, sweeping away the final legal hurdle to Mr Mubarak’s release from detention.
The ruling drew cheers from Mr Mubarak’s supporters, who have in recent years cast off the stigma once associated with his name to air increasingly vocal demands for his release. But it represented a bitter landmark for the millions of Egyptians who risked their lives to oust Mubarak and his circle during the heady, 18-day uprising in early 2011.
None of the Mubarak-era figures who grew rich and influential during his time in power are still in jail. The sole exception is Mr Mubarak himself, who has been under guard for years at the Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo, at a room overlooking the Nile.
But the decision to keep him in detention is widely seen in Cairo as a political matter rather than a legal one — constructed to avoid any embarrassment to Egypt’s current leader, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who sometimes praises the 2011 revolution.
In contrast, thousands of Egyptians who rose against him in 2011 are stuck in prison, in many cases after mass trials that drew stinging international criticism. The prisoners include supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, but also activists, lawyers and journalists who dared to challenge el-Sissi.
“It’s pretty telling that Mubarak, who ran the country into the ground, gets acquitted, and people who gave their everything to try and do something for the country are sitting in prison,” said Ahdaf Soueif, an author whose nephew, activist and blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah, is in jail.
Some Egyptian prisoners have been held without trial for years, often in terrible conditions, in stark contrast with the relatively gilded conditions enjoyed by Mr Mubarak. According to supporters who have visited him, Mr Mubarak gets regular deliveries of flowers, newspapers and takeout restaurant meals, as well as a constant stream of visitors.
Occasionally, Mr Mubarak emerges onto the balcony to wave at cheering supporters gathered at the hospital gates. His sons Alaa and Gamal, who were convicted on charges of embezzling millions of US dollars of state money, were released from prison in 2015 and are often sighted in restaurants and shops in upscale Cairo neighborhoods.
In the past six years, Mr Mubarak has faced a slew of criminal charges for corruption and misrule. He was often seen glowering with anger when he appeared in court and was forced to sit inside a cage. But he has been convicted in just one corruption case, which concluded in 2015 when an appeals court upheld a three-year sentence. The judge allowed Mr Mubarak to count time served against the sentence.
Alternately defiant or embittered, Mr Mubarak never publicly displayed much contrition for his actions during his three decades in power. On Thursday he was flown by helicopter to the courtroom, where he sat in a wheelchair and smiled at supporters from the defendant’s cage. Among those watching from the public gallery was his son Gamal, once groomed as his successor.
Yousri Abdelraziq, a lawyer and Mubarak supporter who was present in court, said the former president was in a buoyant mood after his acquittal. “He fully intends to go home, perhaps in a month or two,” he said. He suggested that Mr Mubarak might want to go to his palatial villa at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik.