CAIRO: With the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak Feb. 11, reports are attempting to piece together the final 18 days of his reign since the beginning of the Jan. 25 revolution and what happened behind the scenes.
There is a lot of speculation especially regarding his speech of Feb. 10, since many had announced beforehand that he would step down in his final speech. Eventually he didn’t. It now appears that there were several versions of that speech recorded and that his son Gamal, was behind the rewrites as he attempted to keep his father in power.
The state-daily Al-Akhbar – which until Feb. 11 had been a regime mouthpiece – reported that a huge fight had broken out between Mubarak’s two sons, Alaa and Gamal, that almost came to blows at the Presidential Palace on Thursday. According to the report, Alaa blamed his brother for what had happened and that their father’s image was now destroyed at the end of his life.
However that wasn’t the only rift that took place. A source that asked for their name to be withheld told Daily News Egypt that an argument ensued between the Vice-President Omar Suleiman and the Armed Forces Higher Council on Wednesday Feb. 9 over the direction the country was taking and where to go from now.
The source also said that National Democratic Party Secretary General Hossam Badrawi pleaded with Mubarak to step down before the speech, and expected that he had convinced him, thus his announcement earlier in the day that Mubarak would respond to the will of the people. The source said that it was Gamal who talked him out of doing it. Badrawi promptly resigned the day after Mubarak gave his speech.
British journalist Robert Fisk also reported that after Mubarak’s Feb. 10 speech, Defense Minister Mohamed Tantawi held a three-hour meeting with the President that went to the early hours of the morning, hours before the announcement that he had stepped down.
Fisk also claimed that on Jan. 30 – the day a military fighter jet flew quite low over the protesters in Tahrir Square – Mubarak gave an order to the armed forces to attack the protesters in the square. According to Fisk, military tank commanders in the area received the order and then got on the phones to their immediate superiors and/or fathers who had also served in the military for advice. All said to disobey the order and not fire on the Egyptian people.
A number of reports are also speculating on the extent of the Mubaraks wealth, with the Guardian reporting that it could be anywhere between $40-70 billion. However, analysts told the Huffington Post that it was closer to $5 billion and includes properties in London, Paris, New York and Beverly Hills.
Switzerland has announced that it has frozen funds in its secretive banks believed to belong to the Mubaraks and other members of the old regime. According to AP Gamal has a six-storey property in London and was until 2001 the director of a London-based investment vehicle titled Medinvest Associates Ltd. Formed in 1996. He also has an 18 percent stake in the EFG-Hermes subsidiary EFG-Hermes Private Equity.
