CAIRO, (Reuters) – Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, accused of corruption and involvement in killing protesters, went on trial yesterday, delighting those who overthrew him and ringing an alarm bell for other autocrats around the Arab world.
In a scene that Egyptians would have found unthinkable just eight months ago, the man who ruled them for 30 years was wheeled behind the bars of a courtroom cage in a hospital bed to hear charges that could carry the death penalty.
Mubarak is the first Arab leader to stand trial in person since popular uprisings swept the Middle East this year.
His two sons, Alaa and Gamal, were also in the defendants’ cage, clutching copies of the Koran, alongside former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli and six senior security officials.
“I entirely deny all those accusations,” said the 83-year-old former president after the prosecutor accused him of intending to kill peaceful protesters during an 18-day revolt that toppled him on Feb. 11 and during the previous decade. The prosecutor also charged Mubarak with corruption and wasting public funds, and said he had authorised Adli to use live ammunition to quell demonstrations.
About 850 people were killed during the unrest. A lawyer acting for families of the dead demanded execution for Adli.
A military council led by a long-serving defence minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, took over when Mubarak quit. It has promised a transition to democracy in the Arab world’s most populous nation — a process far from complete. Defence lawyers asked for Tantawi, ex-intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and about 1,600 others to testify as witnesses, in a move that could embarrass Egypt’s new military rulers.
The military had tried to distance itself from Mubarak, without being able to silence critics who accused it of seeking to shield its former commander by delaying his trial.
Many Egyptians still revere the army but some protesters say it must also be reformed, faulting its handling of the transition and its vast economic interests in Egypt. “Mubarak’s lawyer wants to embroil Tantawi and generals in council who have said several times in the media that they were given orders to fire at protesters to disband protests,” military analyst Safwat al-Zayaat said.
GOOD INTENTIONS
One army officer said Mubarak’s trial proved the military’s good intentions. “This step unites the army and the people in building a better system, free of corruption,” he said.
Protesters had camped out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for three weeks in July seeking a swifter trial for Mubarak and demanding that the military speed up democratic reforms.
After the session, Judge Ahmed Refaat said Mubarak would be moved to a Cairo hospital, instead of the hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where he has been since April.
He said Mubarak would have to attend the next court session, set for Aug. 15 and that the court would reconvene on Aug. 4 in Adli’s case.
Television pictures show the former interior minister leaving the court building smiling and greeting officers who were guarding him before getting into a police truck that took him back to prison. The trial, televised around the world, transfixed Egyptians and other Arabs, most of whom have spent their lives under authoritarian systems shaken by this year’s “Arab Spring”.
“I’m so happy. I feel tomorrow will be better and that the next president knows what could happen to him if he goes against his people,” Ahmed Amer, 30, a water utility employee, said outside the Cairo courtroom, where crowds watched the trial on a giant screen erected outside.
