Egypt seethes over Mubarak's life sentence
By Nehal El-Sherif, dpa
Cairo (dpa) - Lawyers for the plaintiffs sighed with relief when the judge in a Cairo court sentenced Hosny Mubarak and his former interior minister Habib al-Adli to life imprisonment on Saturday.
"The court has decided to punish former president Mohamed Hosny al-Sayed Mubarak with a life sentence on charges against him in the complicity of the killing crimes," presiding judge Ahmed Refaat announced.
At that very moment, Mubarak's sons Alaa and Gamal tried to shield the reportedly frail 84-year-old - reclining on a gurney in the courtroom while wearing sunglasses - from television cameras.
But, as Refaat continued, relief quickly turned to disappointment for those representing the relatives of the 846 people killed during 18 days of peaceful demonstrations against the Mubarak regime in early 2011.
Reading from a list of names and titles, the judge pronounced his six co-defendants - security officials at the time of the killings "innocent of the charges."
The lawyers began protesting and jeering, with several shouting.
Tempers flared when Refaat acquitted Mubarak, his two sons and businessman Hussein Salem of charges of corruption and wasting public funds.
Chants of "invalid" and "the people want the judiciary purged" rang out from the public gallery.
Proceedings inside the court, set up especially for the trial, degenerated into mayhem even before Refaat finished reading his verdict.
Seconds later, there were scuffles between plaintiffs' lawyers and their counterparts from the defence.
In his opening remarks, he had spoken of "the dark days" in Egypt under Mubarak's 30-year hold on the country, characterized by corruption, fraud, bribery and repression.
"A new dawn arose on Egypt on January 25, 2011," he said, referring to the start of the protests that would lead to Mubarak stepping down less than a month later on February 11.
"We made a promise to have a fair trial based on the law ... We wanted this historic trial to be fair in order to give the rights to its true owners," Refaat said.
The court had dismissed some witness testimony, forensic medical reports and video footage, which it found to be "unconvincing" evidence, he said.
The verdict left lawyer Abdul-Fatah Hamed, who represented the families of several of the victims, angry.
"Despite the life sentencing against Mubarak and al-Adli, the judge examined all evidence furnished by prosecutors, which means that he gave the two convicts an open door for acquittal when their appeals are heard," he told dpa.
The judge noted that not a single perpetrator of the deadly crackdown on protesters was identified by the prosecution during the trial hearings.
"Refaat could have at least treated their crimes as a misdemeanor and handed them a jailing term of one to two years," Hamed said, referring to the six security officials who were acquitted.
On the eve of the verdict, Mubarak's sons, Gamal, once seen as his father's likely successor, and Alaa, a low-profile businessman, were charged in a separate corruption case.
The sense in the hundreds-strong crowd outside the court at the Police Academy on the outskirts of Cairo on Saturday was that this was a "cover-up for today's verdict."
Mubarak supporters, meanwhile, stood crying outside the court. Some expressed anger. Security forces stood between them and the crowd.
A few metres away, the former leader's opponents were angry by the acquittals, minutes after they celebrated Mubarak's verdict and hugged each other in joy.
Thousands of people congregated on the streets in Cairo and other cities, to protest against what they described as "the loss of the victim's rights."
Protesters in Tahrir Square chanted: "People want the revolution all over again."
Shadi Hamid, the director of research at the Brookings Doha Centre, said the court session illustrated what he called a "horribly mismanaged" period of transition in Egypt.
"Initial, fleeting satisfaction, followed by disappointment, and then anger. The whole transition in a moment," he said.
The climax to the Mubarak trial came two weeks ahead of the run-off vote in Egypt's first free presidential elections.
Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under Mubarak, will face Mohammed Morsi, a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood - an organization banned by the previous regime.
"Shafiq is coming. This verdict says it all," one lawyer shouted as she left the courtroom, calling on her colleagues to stage a sit-in at Tahrir Square in central Cairo - the rallying point of the Egyptian revolution.
Mubarak opponents were angered when Shafiq qualified for the run-off vote. They blame the former air force commander for a deadly attack by Mubarak loyalists against protesters camped in Tahrir during the revolt in February 2011.
