Mubarak set to leave prison

CAIRO: Deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak will leave jail as early as Thursday after a court ruling that jolted a divided nation already in turmoil seven weeks after the army toppled President Muhammad Mursi.
Convening on Wednesday at the Cairo jail where Mubarak is held, the court upheld a petition from his lawyer demanding the release of the man who ruled Egypt for 30 years until he was overthrown during the uprisings that swept the Arab world in early 2011.
Judicial and security sources said the court had ordered Mubarak’s release. His lawyer, Fareed Al-Deeb, confirmed this as he left Tora prison after the session. Asked when Mubarak would go free, he told Reuters: “Maybe tomorrow.”
Mubarak, 85, was sentenced to life in prison last year for failing to prevent the killing of demonstrators. But a court accepted his appeal earlier this year and ordered a retrial. The ailing former president probably has no political future.
But many Egyptians would see his release as the rehabilitation of an old order that endured through six decades of military-backed rule — and even a reversal of the pro-democracy revolt that toppled him.
At least 900 people, including 100 soldiers and police, have been killed in a crackdown on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood in the past week, making it Egypt’s bloodiest civil episode in decades. The United States and the European Union are both reviewing aid to Cairo in light of the bloodshed.
Mubarak is still being retried on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during the revolt against him, but he has already served the maximum pre-trial detention in that case.
The court ruling removed the last legal ground for his imprisonment in connection with a corruption case, following a similar decision in another corruption case on Monday.
Mubarak’s release might stir more turbulence in Egypt, where the army ousted Mursi, the country’s first freely elected leader, on July 3, saying it was responding to the will of the people following vast protests demanding his removal.
The generals have installed an interim administration to oversee a roadmap they say will lead Egypt to back to democracy.
Western nations were uneasy during Mursi’s year in power, when he assumed extraordinary powers to ram through an Islamist-tinged constitution.
Washington has not denounced the army takeover as a “coup,” which under US law would force a suspension of aid. The ensuing bloodshed, however, has dismayed the West.
US Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential nominee who has emerged as a strong advocate of suspending aid, said: “The slaughter of hundred of Egyptians in the street is appalling to all of us.
“Now we should expect in return for our aid that the generals who are now running the country schedule a change in the constitution, schedule elections as soon as possible and the installation of a government that is representative of the people. The present government is representative of no one.”