Egypt’s high court overturns last conviction against Mubarak

CAIRO – Arab Telegraph – Egypt’s high court Yesterday overturned the only remaining conviction against former president Hosni Mubarak, opening the way for his possible release four years after the revolution that toppled him.

Mubarak, 86, was sentenced to three years in prison last May for diverting public funds earmarked to renovate presidential palaces and using the money to upgrade family properties. His two sons were given four-year jail terms in the same case.

Suffering from ill health, he has been serving his sentence in a military hospital in the upscale Maadi district of Cairo.

Mubarak remains detained for now, but judicial sources say he could soon walk free as no convictions remain against him after the high court ordered a retrial in the embezzlement case.

His release, while thousands of his political opponents languish in jail, would be a further blow to activists who had hoped his downfall in the 2011 Arab Spring marked the dawn of a new era of political freedom in Egypt.

Tuesday’s verdict follows a court decision in November to drop charges against Mubarak of conspiring to kill protesters in the uprising that ended his 30-year rule.

Many Egyptians who lived through Mubarak’s rule view it as a period of autocracy and crony capitalism.

The Court of Cassation, which ordered the retrial, did not say if Mubarak should be freed on bail in the meantime.

Mubarak also faces retrial for a third and final time over charges of involvement in the death of demonstrators in 2011.

The official MENA news agency quoted an interior ministry source as saying Mubarak and his sons would only be released on orders from the public prosecution or the court that retries them.

A source in the public prosecutor’s office said it was up to the courts that retry Mubarak whether to release him on bail or to keep him in pretrial detention pending a verdict, suggesting he will remain incarcerated for the time being.

But his lawyer, Fareed el-Deeb, told reporters after Tuesday’s hearing that Mubarak had served the maximum permitted time in pretrial detention and should be freed.

Before his conviction in the presidential palaces embezzlement cases in May, Mubarak had been freed on that basis.