State-run news media said 85-year-old Mubarak was flown from Cairo's Tora prison Thursday afternoon aboard a medically equipped helicopter and arrived at the Maadi Military Hospital, where he will remain at his request. Dozens of Mubarak's supporters rallied outside the prison earlier as they awaited his release from more than two years in detention, the Associated Press reported.
But the court's ruling to free Mubarak was greeted mostly with indifference in the Arab world's largest country -- the most stunning sign yet of how outrage over Mubarak's iron-fisted rule has faded since the Arab Spring revolt that swept him from power.
Washington Post reports that Mubarak's release, attributed to a legal technicality, would have provoked mass outrage in the months after Egypt's 2011 popular uprising. But seven weeks after a military coup ousted the country's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and put an end to its brief experiment with Islamist rule, some met the court decision with nostalgia for Mubarak's order.
Hours after the court's ruling on Wednesday, Egypt's military-backed interim government invoked military law in ordering that Mubarak be placed under house arrest after his release.
The court decision came amid a resurgence of the police state that Mubarak led for three decades and an intensifying government crackdown on his old foes in the Muslim Brotherhood.
The ruling could further inflame supporters of the Islamist opposition. About 1,000 civilians have been killed since security forces broke up two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo last week.
The court ordered Mubarak's release after the former president agreed to return or pay the value of gifts he received from state news organizations while in office, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said. The Egyptian prosecutor's office said Mubarak's assets would remain frozen.
It was the only active case among the three brought against him since his ouster. Judicial authorities accepted Mubarak's appeal for a retrial on separate charges of corruption and killing protesters during the Arab Spring uprising. Other charges related to the renovation of the presidential palace are pending but do not require his detention because his family put up some property as bond.
Under Egyptian law, suspects cannot be held for more than two years without a conviction, said Badr Abdellaty, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. Mubarak has reached the two-year limit, Abdellaty said. "So he can stay at home," the spokesman said. Mubarak is to return to court for his remaining judicial proceedings.
The prosecutor's office, part of a judiciary that critics have long accused of being stacked with Mubarak allies, said that the court's decision was final and could not be appealed.
"The prosecution has no legal ground to appeal the decision of his release, as Mubarak paid the money he took, and has no legal ground for his detention," said Yassir Mohammad Sayyid Ahmad, a lawyer who represents families of Egyptians killed by Mubarak's security forces during the 18-day uprising in 2011, which left more than 800 people dead.
0 comments: