'The lion is back in his den'

Hosni Mubarak, the first leader to face trial after the Arab Spring uprisings that swept through North Africa is a free man after spending six years in detention. Legalbrief reports that the extraordinary development marks the end of a futile campaign to find him accountable for numerous human rights abuses during his term in office. His long-time lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, who has guided him through a tangled cluster of prosecutions since 2011, confirmed his release. Mubarak, who had been held at a Cairo military hospital for most of his incarceration, is recuperating at his Heliopolis home. Earlier this month, the 88-year-old was acquitted by Egypt’s highest appeals court in the final verdict in a long-running case that originally resulted in him being sentenced to life in prison in 2012 over the deaths of 239 people in Arab Spring protests against his rule. The Guardian reports that a separate corruption charge was overturned in January 2015. For those who worked to topple the former dictator, Mubarak’s freedom marks a grim moment in Egypt’s modern history. Yet some reacted with little more than resignation as his release became imminent, numbed by the years of political turmoil since his fall. Mubarak’s democratically elected successor, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown in a popularly backed military coup in 2013. The report notes that many see echoes of Mubarak’s style of leadership in Egypt’s current leader, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. ‘The Mubarak acquittal is of significant symbolic value in that it reflects an absolute failure of Egyptian judicial and legal institutions to hold a single official accountable for the killing of almost 900 protesters during the January 25 revolution. It is indicative of a deeper, compounded crisis of transitional justice,’ said Mai el Sedany, a legal expert with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.