Hosni Mubarak walks free after six years in jail

Ex-president, recently acquitted for role in protester deaths during 2011 uprising, is free after six-year detention.

Mubarak supporters gathered outside the military hospital where he is staying [Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Egypt’s ousted president Hosni Mubarak left a military hospital on Friday where he had spent much of his six-year detention, his lawyer said.

Mubarak had been cleared for release earlier this month after a top court finally acquitted him of involvement in protester deaths during the 2011 revolt that ousted him.

“Yes,” his lawyer Farid al-Deeb told AFP news agency when asked if Mubarak had left the hospital on Friday.

Mubarak was accused of inciting the deaths of protesters during the 18-day revolt, in which about 850 people were killed as police clashed with demonstrators.

He was sentenced to life in 2012 in the case, but an appeals court ordered a retrial which dismissed the charges two years later.

Egypt’s top appeals court on March 2 acquitted him of involvement in the killings.

In January 2016, the appeals court upheld a three-year prison sentence for Mubarak and his two sons on corruption charges.

But the sentence took into account time served. Both of his sons, Alaa and Gamal, were freed.

On Thursday, a court ordered a renewed corruption investigation into Mubarak for allegedly receiving gifts from the state owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

Meanwhile several key activists in the 2011 uprising are now serving lengthy jail terms, and rights groups say hundreds of others have been forcibly disappeared.

“As Hosni Mubarak goes free in Egypt, thousands of prisoners still languish in horrific prison conditions. Many face the death penalty on charges relating to protests, in mass trials that make a mockery of due process,” said Harriet McCulloch, a deputy director at human rights organisation Reprieve.

Since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power after the 2013 ouster of democratically-elected Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood – Mubarak’s successor, Egyptian authorities have cracked down on freedom of expression.

“Some were arrested as children – people like Irish citizen Ibrahim Halawa, who has suffered terrible abuses in jail. The Sisi Government must now show that Egypt’s justice system is worthy of the name and release Ibrahim, and the hundreds like him,” said McCulloch.