Egypt’s Mubarak free to go home for 1st time since 2011

By Mohamed Mahmoud

CAIRO (AA) - Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Friday left a military hospital in southern Cairo, returning home for the first time since being forced to step down after a 2011 popular uprising.

“We carried out the decision to release the former president who is now on his way to his residence in Cairo’s Misr al-Gedida district,” Farid al-Dib, Mubarak’s lawyer, told Anadolu Agency.

Earlier this month, an Egyptian prosecutor ordered Mubarak’s release from custody for the first time since 2011.

Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for more than three decades, was forced to relinquish executive power to the army in February 2011 after 18 days of countrywide protests.

Two months later, he was put on trial to face multiple charges, including corruption, abuse of power and involvement in the murder of hundreds of anti-regime demonstrators by Egyptian security forces.

After several trials, appeals and retrials, however, he was ultimately cleared of the charges against him.

The only charge for which he was convicted was the illegal appropriation of state funds to refurbish several of his family’s lavish personal residences.

In 2012, an Egyptian court slapped Mubarak with a life sentence for ordering his security forces to fire on demonstrators at the height of the uprising.

An appeals court, however, ordered a retrial in 2014 and he was acquitted of this charge, too, earlier this month.