(AFP File Photo)
Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat ordered Saturday a study into the legal “reasons” behind the sentences by the Cairo Criminal Court, to appeal against the ruling in the “Trial of the Century”.
The study will be carried out by the technical office of the general prosecution.
The Cairo Criminal Court said it was unable to rule on murder charges against former president Hosni Mubarak relating to the 25 January Revolution.
Judge Mahmoud Rashidi acquitted Mubarak on graft charges relating to the sale of natural gas to Israel but said it was “inadmissible” for the court to rule on the murder charges.
Former interior minister Habib Al-Adly, four of his aides, and fugitive businessman Hussein Salem were acquitted on all charges.
The retrial was held at the Police Academy on the outskirts of Cairo for security reasons. Mubarak was transferred to the court by helicopter from a Maadi hospital, where he is held due to his deteriorating health.
Dubbed the ‘trial of the century’, Mubarak, his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, Al-Adly, six of his aides and Salem stood trial for the first time on 3 August 2011.
The court said that 289 people were killed and 1,588 injured across 11 governorates from 25 January to 31 January 2011.
In August, Mubarak denied issuing orders to kill protesters in the 25 January Revolution in his defence testimony on Wednesday before the Cairo Criminal Court.
Al-Adly denied killing or involvement in killing protesters in his testimony as well. On 28 January 2011, dubbed the Friday of Rage, security forces failed to forcibly disperse hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square with tear gas and live ammunition. They eventually lost control, ceding the streets to protesters.
Police stations and prisons were broken into and set ablaze, which allowed thousands of convicts and detainees to escape.
Mubarak, now 86, resigned on 11 February 2011 following 18 days of protests and handed power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The court was supposed to issue the verdict on 27 September, but it said that it needed more time to issue the verdict reasoning based on the 160,000 paper-case.
In June 2012, Mubarak and Al-Adly were sentenced to life in prison over the charges of failing to prevent the killing of protesters, while his sons and five aides were acquitted due to the lack of evidence.
In May 2014, Mubarak was convicted in another trial of embezzlement and sentenced to three years in prison in the case dubbed “the presidential palaces”. Gamal and Alaa Mubarak were handed down four year sentences in the same case.
The three were ordered to pay back about EGP 21m and collectively fined about EGP 125m.
