Hosni Mubarak’s Three Year Corruption Sentence Overturned

Egypt’s Court of Cassation ordered on Tuesday a retrial for former President Hosni Mubarak over embezzlement charges for which he has been convicted last year.

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 over 125 million Egyptian pounds 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 was 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 the former president will be retried while in custody. A judicial source told Aswat Masriya on Monday that Mubarak 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 perventive 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.

The Cairo Criminal Court dropped on November 29, 2014 the case against Mubarak over 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.

Egypt’s top prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, approved on Thursday the grounds for appeal in the case. The case now awaits a decision from the Court of Cassation, which would consider a retrial.