Egypt’s Court of Cassation has ordered the retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak, who was convicted last year of embezzling over 125 million Egyptian pounds. This, by extension, means the two sons of the former leader that were jailed for aiding him will also be retried.
The case was referred to the Cairo Court of Appeals, which will schedule a retrial session in a different judicial district.
In May 2014, a Cairo court sentenced Mubarak to three years in prison for seizing funds allocated to presidential palaces. His two sons, Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, were sentenced to four years in prison for aiding their father in embezzling the sum of money. The former president has been serving his sentence in a military hospital in Cairo.
Mubarak’s lawyer, Farid El-Deeb filed the challenge last July, calling for the sentence to be overturned. Both Deeb and the prosecution urged the Court of Cassation to order a retrial on Tuesday. Supporters of the toppled president cheered in court, chanting “we love you, Mr. President”, and “long live justice.”
It remains unclear whether Mubarak will be retried while in custody. A judicial source told Aswat Masriya on Monday that the former president will be released regardless of whether or not a retrial is ordered, since he has already served his three-year prison sentence, mostly in preventive detention. Deeb said he will submit a request to the public prosecution to calculate the duration of Alaa and Gamal Mubarak’s preventive detention, in order to subtract it from their four-year prison sentences.
Mubarak and his two sons were taken into custody in April 2011. Alaa and Gamal have been jailed since then, while Mubarak was released in August 2013, when he was put on house arrest in a military hospital. In November, the Cairo Criminal Court dropped a case relating to Mubarak’s complicity in the killing of protesters during the 18-day January 2011 uprising which toppled his regime. The court also acquitted Mubarak’s Interior Minister Habib al-Adly and four of his aides on charges of inciting and aiding the killing of 238 protesters.
