SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, (THEWILL) – Egypt’s former President, Hosni Mubarak, returned home, Friday, a freeman following his release from custody.
Mubarak had been was slammed with corruption and murder charges and had been in detention following his ouster in 2011
He left the Armed Forces hospital in Cairo’s southern suburb of Maadi earlier in the morning from where he went to his house in the upscale district of Heliopolis under heavy security measures.
Mubarak’s lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, told the Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Youm, that the ailing former president returned home with his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, and that the entire family, including Mubarak’s wife Suzanne came together at his house to celebrate his return and have breakfast together.
The 88-year-old Mubarak was acquitted by Egypt’s top appeals Court on March 2 of charges that he ordered the killing of protesters during the 2011 popular uprising that led to his ouster.
At that point, he had already served a three-year sentence for embezzling state funds while in detention in connection with the case on the deaths of protesters.
A criminal court had ruled in May 2015 to jail Mubarak for three years and fine him millions of Egyptian pounds following his conviction for embezzling funds earmarked for the maintenance and renovation of presidential palaces. The ruling was upheld by another court in January 2016.
Prosecutors, however, reopened another corruption case on Thursday, linked to allegations that Mubarak received gifts from the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper worth $1 million, along with his family members. The case was closed before the prosecutors appealed and the case restarted.
The order to release Mubarak was the latest in a series of court rulings in recent years in Egypt that acquitted some two dozen, Mubarak-era cabinet ministers, top police officers and aides charged with graft or in connection with the killing of some 900 protesters during the uprising.
Mubarak’s sons were also convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in the same embezzlement case. They still face charges in an insider trading case, but both are free and have recently made a series of intensely publicized appearances greeted enthusiastically by supporters of their father.
