Mubarak-era interior minister cleared of graft charges

By Sayed Fathi and Viola Fahmy

CAIRO (AA) - Habib al-Adly, former President Hosni Mubarak’s last interior minister, was exonerated of corruption charges on Thursday by an Egyptian court, judicial sources have said.

Al-Adly, who served as interior minister under Mubarak from 1997 to 2011, was acquitted of the charges -- alongside eight other defendants -- by Egypt’s Giza Criminal Court.

The nine had all been convicted earlier of illicitly syphoning funds from the Interior Ministry.

A tenth defendant in the case, however, was ultimately convicted of the charge, earning a three-year prison sentence.

In January, Egypt’s Court of Cassation accepted an appeal lodged by the ten defendants who had all been convicted on graft charges in 2017.

Nine out of ten of those convictions were overturned by Thursday’s criminal court ruling.

Al-Adly and a handful of other Mubarak-era officials had been accused of pilfering some 2.4 billion Egyptian pounds worth of ministry funds (roughly equivalent to $136 million) in the period from 2000 to 2011.

* Writing by Mahmoud Barakat