(AFP File Photo)
Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat ordered Tuesday an appeal of the verdict of the retrial of ousted president Hosni Mubarak and 10 co-defendants, citing “legal flaws”.
The order comes three days after Barakat requested a study into the legal “reasons” behind the sentences by the Cairo Criminal Court, only hours after the verdict was delivered.
Barakat ordered the appeal based on the results of the study, which indicated legal flaws. The appeal will be presented to the Court of Cassation.
A statement issued by the prosecution said the decision to appeal stems from the prosecution’s role as defined by the law, and is not “affected by the conflicts of different political forces”.
Cassation Court lawyer Mohamed Zare’ had said earlier this week that there is a possibility that the case will go to court once more. Zare’ said the Court of Cassation can accept the appeal and rule on the case.
At the end of the retrial on Saturday, murder charges against Mubarak were dismissed. Former interior minister Habib Al-Adly and four of his aides were acquitted of murder charges.
Mubarak and business tycoon Hussein Salem were acquitted of graft charges relating to the sale of natural gas to Israel.
Mubarak also faced charges of corruption, along with his sons Alaa and Gamal, and Salem. The corruption charges were dropped, with the judge citing that these are subject to a statute of limitations, which had expired.
The verdict was handed to the defendants by the Cairo Criminal Court, in a trial presided by Judge Mahmoud Rashidy.
The reasoning behind the verdict was issued in a 280 page document.
Mubarak’s charges of “participating, through agreement”, in the killing of protesters during the 25 January Revolution were deemed inadmissible by court. Rashidy cited an “implied decision” by prosecutors that there is no basis to put Mubarak’s name on the list of people facing murder charges.
In 2011, prosecutors investigated Mubarak, former interior minister Al-Adly and his aides. They charged Al-Adly and his aides with premeditated murder on 23 March, 2011, but did not however, include the former president in the lost of those accused, until two months later.
Rashidy said the prosecution decision not to include Mubarak’s name at the beginning was “an implied decision that there is no basis to file the criminal charge against him, which prevents prosecution from going back to accuse him.”
This trial has been dubbed the ‘Trial of the Century’. The former president had previously been handed a life sentence, along with Al-Adly, in June 2012.
However, the Court of Cassation accepted Mubarak’s appeal and ordered a retrial in 2013.
Mubarak was convicted in May and was handed three years in maximum security prison for embezzlement, while his sons Alaa and Gamal were handed four each.
