CAIRO: Ex-president Hosni Mubarak came out well from his third appearance at trial without being implicated by witnesses in firing at protesters during the revolt against him, Egyptian media said Tuesday.
"The prosecution witnesses turned into defense witnesses," ran the front-page headline of independent daily Al-Shorouk, deeming the hearing "a battering for the victims’ families."
The Al-Tahrir newspaper, borne of the January and February revolution that toppled the president, said "the Mubarak trial surprises have started."
It noted that the main witness, the head of riot police communication services General Hussein Moussa, "vindicated" Mubarak and his interior minister Habib El-Adly.
Instead, it said, Moussa offered the court a second-rate "scapegoat" in the form of defendant General Ahmed Ramzy, the former head of anti-riot forces.
Moussa was incorrectly identified as Morsi by state television on Monday.
The state-run Al-Akhbar questioned whether the police officers called to the bar were "false witnesses."
The daily pointed out that lawyers had called for the appearance of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawy, head of the armed forces and the de facto head of state. Tantawy was Mubarak’s defense minister for 20 years.
The next hearing of the high-profile trial has been fixed for Wednesday.
Since it began on August 3, the 83-year-old former strongman has been wheeled into a black metal cage in the court on a stretcher, making for live gripping images on television.
The trial judge, however, banned live coverage of the trial during the second session of the proceedings on August 15.
Mubarak is being tried for the murder of anti-regime protesters during the revolution against him earlier this year that resulted in about 850 deaths.
The former president and his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, are also being tried for graft. The three pleaded not guilty at the first session of the trial.
The trial was a key demand of protesters who held large demonstrations to pressure the military, which took charge after Mubarak’s fall, to try former regime officials.
It is being held in a police academy once named after Mubarak on Cairo’s outskirts.
