Bitter twist: Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is taken to a military hospital after his trial. An appeals court has ruled he is free to go home.
The release of Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, approved on Monday, ends talk about the Arab Spring uprising that toppled him in 2011 after 30 years in power, an analyst said.
An Egyptian prosecutor approved a request by Mubarak’s lawyer for his release after a top court acquitted him of involvement in the killing of protesters during the popular revolt.
His expected release comes while many leaders of the 2011 protests that ousted him remain in jail and members of his former regime walk free.
Six years on, critics say the abuses they fought under Mubarak have returned with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who toppled Mubarak’s Islamist successor after just a year in power.
“Talk of the Arab Spring has completely stopped,” said Mai Mogib, a politics professor at Cairo University, although “discussing Mubarak and symbols of his era has become acceptable in the media and in the street”.
Mubarak’s lawyer Farid al-Deeb said on Monday that the 88-year-old was free to go home after having spent most of his time since his arrest in 2011 detained at a military hospital in Cairo. “He can go home now when the doctors decide he is able to,” Al-Deeb said, adding that Mubarak is banned from leaving the country pending an ongoing graft investigation.
Mubarak’s sons have already been released from prison, and most of the charges brought against the ex-president’s regime members have been dismissed. “He’s in a better position than all other presidents who faced the Arab Spring uprisings,” Mogib said.
Mubarak was accused of inciting the deaths of protesters during the 18-day revolt. About 850 people were killed when police clashed with demonstrators.
On March 2, Egypt’s top appeals court acquitted him of involvement in the killings. Mubarak was sentenced to life in 2012, but an appeals court ordered a retrial, which dismissed the charges two years later.
His acquittal this month, which is final, has angered relatives of those killed in 2011. “Our son’s blood was spilled for nothing,” said Mostafa Morsi, whose son, aged 22, was shot dead on January 28 2011. “I wish Mohammed had lived to work, marry and have children,” his father said.
Several key activists in the 2011 uprising are now serving long jail terms, and rights groups say hundreds of others have been “disappeared”.
The anti-Mubarak revolt ushered in instability, which drove away tourists and investors, taking a heavy toll on the economy. In the street and on television talk shows, Egyptians now mainly discuss the faltering economy and rising prices instead of politics.
“After six years of the so-called Arab Spring, people remember Mubarak’s era with nostalgia,” said Mahmoud Ibrahim, a former mid-level official of Mubarak’s dissolved National Democratic Party. “The sentence simply says Mubarak is neither corrupt nor a killer.”
Prosecutors had levelled various charges against Mubarak following his February 2011 resignation.
In January 2016, the appeals court upheld a three-year prison sentence for Mubarak and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, on corruption charges. But the sentence took into account time served. Both of sons were freed.
An investigation into whether Mubarak had received gifts unlawfully was dropped by the investigating judge but prosecutors have appealed the decision.
A former air force chief and vice-president, Mubarak became president after jihadists shot dead president Anwar Sadat in 1981. He himself was wounded.
Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected civilian leader, served for just one year before the military toppled and detained him in 2013 amid mass protests against his rule. The authorities then launched a deadly crackdown on Morsi’s backers.
Hundreds, including Morsi, were sentenced to death after speedy mass trials, although courts have since overturned many of the convictions.
His overthrow sparked a jihadist insurgency, mainly in north Sinai, which has seen hundreds of policemen and soldiers killed.
The attacks, which have reached Cairo, have led Sisi to argue that the dangers facing Egypt require a firm hand. — AFP