An Egyptian court on Wednesday ordered former President Hosni Mubarak released from prison, saying all appeals by prosecutors to keep him behind bars had been exhausted. Some accounts said his freedom could come within hours.
Al Ahram, the state newspaper, said on its Web site Wednesday afternoon that his release may be more imminent, quoting an unidentified judicial source. Other reports claimed the prosecution would still have 48 hours to appeal his release.
Even Mr. Mubarak’s opponents expected his release. “We are now facing a sound release order, and the prosecution will appeal and the appeal will be denied and he will walk out, and he has a right to do so,” said Khaled Abu Bakr, a prominent lawyer involved in the cases of protesters killed during the protests against Mr. Mubarak that preceded his downfall.
A judicial source told The New York Times that all appeals had been exhausted “and procedures for his release will begin to be processed right away unless he’s detained pending other trials.” Wednesday’s order, however, applied to the last of three prosecutions that Mr. Mubarak still faced. He had already been ordered freed pending trial on the two other cases, including a retrial on charges of complicity in the deaths of 800 protesters at the end of his regime in January 2011.
Mr. Mubarak’s release would inject a volatile new element into the political crisis convulsing Egypt, coming less than two months after the military coup that toppled his successor, the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president.
The juxtaposition of freedom for Mr. Mubarak while Mr. Morsi remains in custody would dramatically test the level of support for the military-led government among the many anti-Mubarak people who later sided with the decision to depose Mr. Morsi and crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood.
It was still possible that the prosecutors would find another reason to keep Mr. Mubarak incarcerated. Under the martial law rule the military-appointed government has declared, suspending judicial protections, it has the legal tools to do whatever it wants to do with suspects in detention.
But early indications were that prosecutors were not going to aggressively pursue Mr. Mubarak’s continued detention.
According to Al Ahram, the military moved the latest trial in Mr. Mubarak’s case to the prison where he has been held, rather than forcing him to endure the spectacle of a public court hearing as he has had to do in the past, citing security concerns.
The paper’s Web site quoted Gen. Mustafa Baz, director of the prison authority, as saying that Mr. Mubarak’s release paperwork would be submitted to the public prosecutor on Thursday to see if any further cases were brought against him.
The formal decision to release Mr. Mubarak was made by the Northern Court of Appeals in Cairo in the so-called Al Ahram gifts case. Mr. Mubarak was charged with corruption for accepting a series of gifts valued at 28 million Egyptian pounds (about $4.6 million) from Al Ahram, the state-owned news organization.
His lawyer, Mr. Deeb, however, argued that he should be released pending trial because he had already made restitution for that amount to Al Ahram.
Mr. Deeb had argued that keeping him in prison, where he has languished since April 2011, was abusive and exceeded the maximum limits for a prisoner awaiting trial. Chronically ill, Mr. Mubarak has been held most recently in the Tora Prison’s hospital wing.
Mr. Abu Bakr said that it is routine in Egyptian legal proceedings for prosecutors to automatically appeal release orders, and normally courts turn down those appeals. In past months, that procedural tradition was ignored because of political pressure to keep Mr. Mubarak behind bars, he said. “What happened before when prosecutors pre-empted Mubarak’s release with new charges to keep him held under Morsi is a mockery,” Mr. Abu Bakr said.
Mr. Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years with the support of the Egyptian military, until the military bowed to popular protests and removed him from office more than two years ago.
His ouster, and the disgrace of public trial in courtrooms full of opponents and television cameras, was deeply unpopular among some of Egypt’s allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, which helped put together a $12 billion aid package for Egypt after Mr. Morsi was deposed last month.
The money will help offset threats of aid cutoffs from the United States and European countries over the huge numbers of deaths in pro-Morsi protests.
Just in the past week, more than 1,100 people have been killed and many Muslim Brotherhood activists and leaders have been arrested.
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