Egyptian Court Removes Last Bar to Setting Mubarak Free - New York Times (blog) CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Wednesday ordered former President Hosni Mubarak released from prison, saying all appeals by prosecutors to keep him behind bars had been exhausted. Some accounts said his freedom could come within hours. An official in the office of his lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, confirmed that the firm expected Mr. Mubarak, 85, would be released from prison by Thursday. Al Ahram, the state newspaper, said on its Web site Wednesday afternoon that his release may be more imminent, quoting an unidentified judicial source. Other reports claimed the prosecution would still have 48 hours to appeal his release. Even some of Mr. Mubarak’s opponents expected his release. “We are now facing a sound release order, and the prosecution will appeal and the appeal will be denied and he will walk out, and he has a right to do so,” said Khaled Abu Bakr, a prominent lawyer involved in the cases of protesters killed during the protests against Mr. Mubarak that preceded his downfall more than two years ago. A judicial source told The New York Times that all appeals had been exhausted “and procedures for his release will begin to be processed right away unless he’s detained pending other trials.” Wednesday’s order, however, applied to the last of at least three prosecutions that Mr. Mubarak still faced. He had already been ordered freed pending trial on two other cases, including a retrial on charges of complicity in the deaths of 800 protesters at the end of his regime in January 2011. Mr. Mubarak’s release would inject a volatile new element into the political crisis convulsing Egypt, coming less than two months after the military ousted his successor, the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president. The juxtaposition of freedom for Mr. Mubarak while Mr. Morsi remains in custody would dramatically test the level of support for the military-led government among the many anti-Mubarak people who later sided with the decision to depose Mr. Morsi and crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Reached by telephone and told that Mr. Mubarak’s release now looked imminent, Ahmed Maher, the founder of the 6th of April youth group that helped start the revolution, was initially silent for several moments. “I’m shocked,” he said. But he said he saw no likelihood of street protests if Mr. Mubarak were freed, because opponents of the military-appointed government had been cowed into silence by widespread killings and arrests. “If anybody even thinks of objecting, they will suffer,” he said. “If anybody dares express opposition against the government or the president or the military, they’ll be accused of treason and called a Muslim Brother in hiding.” In Cairo’s Tahrir Square,where protesters once hung banners and nooses demanding Mr. Mubarak’s execution, public opinion appeared to have moved on. No one seemed to care much about Mr. Mubarak’s release. The only ones who did appeared to be groups of Western journalists looking for reactions. There was more concern from the Tamarod movement, the organization that ran a petition drive calling for Mr. Morsi’s ouster and calling for the June 30 demonstrations that led the military to depose him. The group blamed Mr. Morsi for not having more aggressively prosecuted Mr. Mubarak and his subordinates for the deaths of protesters, and it called on the military-appointed government that replaced Mr. Morsi to use its emergency powers to continue to detain Mr. Mubarak. The revolution, Tamarod’s statement said, “will not stand by watching the murderers of martyrs get acquittals.” It was still possible that the prosecutors would find another reason to keep Mr. Mubarak incarcerated. Under the martial law rule the military-appointed government has declared, suspending judicial protections, it has the legal tools to do whatever it wants to do with suspects in detention. Indications were that prosecutors were not going to aggressively pursue Mr. Mubarak’s continued detention. Ahmed Al Bahrawy, a prosecutor in charge of trying of serious public corruption cases, said that his staff would not be able to appeal the release order in Mr. Mubarak’s case because it had been issued at the court’s appellate level already. According to Al Ahram, the military moved the latest trial in Mr. Mubarak’s case to the prison where he has been held, rather than forcing him to endure the spectacle of a public court hearing as he has had to do in the past, citing security concerns. The paper’s Web site quoted Gen. Mustafa Baz, director of the prison authority, as saying that Mr. Mubarak’s release paperwork would be submitted to the public prosecutor on Thursday to see if any further cases were brought against him. The formal decision to release Mr. Mubarak was made by the Northern Court of Appeals in Cairo in the so-called Al Ahram gifts case. Mr. Mubarak was charged with corruption for accepting a series of gifts valued at 28 million Egyptian pounds (about $4.6 million) from Al Ahram, the state-owned news organization. His lawyer, Mr. Deeb, however, argued that he should be released pending trial because he had already made restitution for that amount to Al Ahram. Mr. Deeb had argued that keeping him in prison, where he has languished since April 2011, was abusive and exceeded the legal limits for a prisoner awaiting trial. Chronically ill, Mr. Mubarak has been held most recently in the Tora Prison’s hospital wing. Mr. Abu Bakr said that it was routine in Egyptian legal proceedings for prosecutors to automatically appeal release orders and normally courts reject those appeals. In past months, that procedural tradition was ignored because of political pressure to keep Mr. Mubarak behind bars, he said. “What happened before when prosecutors pre-empted Mubarak’s release with new charges to keep him held under Morsi is a mockery,” Mr. Abu Bakr said. Mr. Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years with the support of the Egyptian military, until the military bowed to popular protests and removed him from office in February 2011. His ouster, and the disgrace of public trial in courtrooms full of opponents and television cameras, was deeply unpopular among some of Egypt’s allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, which helped put together a $12 billion aid package for Egypt after Mr. Morsi was deposed last month. The money will help offset threats to cut off aid from the United States and European countries over the huge numbers of deaths in pro-Morsi protests, although the Egyptian military remains dependent on Washington’s aid for upgrades and maintenance of its American military hardware. Just in the past week, more than 1,100 people have been killed and hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood activists and leaders have been arrested, including their spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie. Mr. Morsi’s own arrest shortly after the military takeover July 3 was initially without formal charges, although he has subsequently been charged, oddly, with having escaped from prison during the anti-Mubarak revolution. He had been jailed for protesting against Mr. Mubarak, and when the prison fell to a general revolt by prisoners, he was among many who walked out – although he publicly announced his presence to avoid being charged with the crime of prison break. Mr. Morsi also has been charged with espionage. One American-trained legal expert here, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, called the espionage charge “self-contradictory on its face, unless one believes that someone else, such as the military, truly represents the state.” Yet unlike Mr. Mubarak, Mr. Morsi has not had access to a lawyer or visits from his family, who have no idea where he is being held. Mr. Morsi’s overthrow, and the military’s imposition of martial law and announcement that it would hold a referendum on a new constitution, have generally been popular, even among many who previously opposed Mr. Mubarak’s regime. That included even many of the early revolutionary groups. “The release of Mubarak may be the chance for others to snap out of it, and understand what’s really happening: the return of the old regime,” Mr. Maher of the 6th of April group said. “Maybe now they will understand that we’ve been fooled.” David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting. KLik Baca selanjutnya : bit.ly/19K4XVt
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:39:55 +0000
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