Egyptian court drops case against ex-president Hosni Mubarak over 2011 protester deaths
PUBLISHED : Saturday, 29 November, 2014, 5:23pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 30 November, 2014, 3:48am
Reuters in Cairo
An image from Egyptian state television shows Hosni Mubarak sitting in the defendant's cage in court on Saturday.
Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak insisted he had done "nothing wrong" as he was cleared of murder in a dramatic retrial following the deaths of about 800 protesters during a 2011 uprising.
The Egyptian court also acquitted the ex-strongman of a corruption charge, but he will remain in detention because he is serving a three-year sentence in a separate graft case.
Seven of his security commanders, including the feared former interior minister Habib al-Adly, were acquitted in connection with the deaths.
Cheers broke out and Mubarak's two sons and co-defendants kissed his forehead when the judge read out the verdict, as Mubarak, 86, lay in an upright stretcher inside the caged dock.
Supporters of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wave by his poster as he was taken by a helicopter ambulance from Maadi Military Hospital to a court in Cairo on Saturday. Photo: AP
Corruption charges against the sons, Alaa and Gamal, were also dropped.
Mubarak was later transported back to a Cairo military hospital where he is serving his sentence. "I did nothing wrong at all," he said.
He praised his own 30-year rule, which was marred by police abuses and corruption, especially the decade before his overthrow, saying: "The last 10 years showed more results than the 20 years before... and then they turned against us." An appeals court had overturned an initial life sentence for Mubarak in 2012 on a technicality.
Many Egyptians increasingly look to his stable era with nostalgia in light of the turmoil that followed his overthrow. His successor Mohammed Mursi, a leader of the main Islamist opposition group under Mubarak, was toppled by the army himself in 2012. .
