Aletho News

Egyptian Court Orders Release of Mubarak Sons

Al-Akhbar | January 22, 2015

An Egyptian court ordered the release on Thursday of the sons of ousted President Hosni Mubarak pending their retrial in a corruption case, their lawyer told Reuters.

Farid al-Deeb said this meant that Alaa and Gamal Mubarak should be released because they were not being tried in any other cases.

However, judicial sources said they would not be freed until prosecutors review other legal cases against them.

The Mubarak brothers do still face charges of stock market manipulation in a separate case, but in June 2013 a court ordered their release in that case.

Given that a court dropped other corruption charges against the sons in yet another case in November, it appeared there were no other cases preventing their release.

The Cairo Criminal Court said in a document explaining its ruling that the two men had already served the maximum permitted time of 18 months in pretrial detention and should therefore not be held pending their retrial in a corruption case.

An appeals court earlier this month ordered their retrial, along with their father, overturning a lower court conviction that saw the two brothers given four-year jail sentences.

Deeb had said Mubarak himself, who is in a military hospital, would also be a free man, but state media reported that there had been no orders yet for his release.

A high court had already overturned the only remaining conviction against Mubarak on January 13, ordering a retrial and opening the way for his possible release.

In November, an Egyptian court dismissed murder charges against Mubarak over the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended the former despot’s decades-long rule. A public prosecutor has since appealed the decision. If Mubarak is retried in the case, it would be for the third and final time under Egyptian law.

About 800 people were killed during the 18-day uprising that unseated Mubarak, in which protesters clashed with police across the country and torched police stations. Mubarak was accused of having ordered the killing of protesters.

In 2011, there were mass protests demanding Mubarak’s prosecution after he retired to a mansion in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh following the uprising that forced him from power that February. He was detained two months later and ordered to stand trial.

Mubarak had also previously been acquitted of corruption charges related to gas exports to Israel.

Since Mohammed Mursi, Mubarak’s successor and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was ousted from power in 2013, then-army chief and current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has made law and order and economic stability his top priorities rather than democratic freedoms – the key demand during the anti-Mubarak uprising.

Human rights group say that Sisi has been even more autocratic and repressive than Mubarak. Since he rose to power, several Mubarak-era officials have made a comeback as have the once reviled police.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

January 22, 2015 - Posted by aletho | Corruption | Egypt