Egypt: Mubarak fraud conviction overturned

A court in Egypt has overturned the convictions
for embezzlement of former President Hosni
Mubarak and his two sons and ordered a retrial.
Mr Mubarak was jailed for three years in May after
being found guilty of fraudulently billing the
government for $14m (£9.3m) of personal
expenses.
But the Court of Cassation found legal procedures
were not followed properly.
It was the last remaining case keeping Mr Mubarak
behind bars. The 86-year-old has been in
detention since April 2011.
Mr Mubarak's lawyer told the BBC he hoped his
client would soon be released from Cairo military
hospital, where is being held.
Charges of conspiring in the killing of hundreds of
protesters during the uprising that ended his rule
in 2011 were dropped in November.
The former president and his sons - Alaa, 53, and
Gamal, 51 - were also cleared of two separate
corruption charges.
At the scene: Orla Guerin, BBC News, Cairo
Egypt's former president can now celebrate
another legal victory.
After years of court cases, his last conviction has
been overturned - though he faces a retrial. A
handful of Mubarak loyalists cheered and shouted
in court when his three-year sentence was
quashed.
Even before today's verdict, his lawyers said he
was entitled to be freed because he had already
spent three years in prison, when pre-trial
detention is included.
A source in the Egyptian prison service told the
BBC the former president would be released, once
they had calculated the days already served.
Legally he may be entitled to his freedom, but
political considerations are likely to play a role.
If he reappears in public - just four years after the
revolution which unseated him - it will deepen the
divisions here, and could provoke fresh unrest on
the streets.
That's something the current Egyptian leadership
may prefer to avoid.
There's speculation that the former leader may opt
to remain in the military hospital overlooking the
Nile, where he has been serving his sentence. One
newspaper report suggested his family was
concerned about ensuring his safety outside the
hospital.
Homes and palaces
The Court of Cassation, Egypt's top appeals court,
announced that it had overturned the three men's
convictions for embezzlement and ordered a retrial
at a brief session on Tuesday morning.
At the original trial, prosecutors alleged that Mr
Mubarak and his sons had billed the government
for more than 100,000 Egyptian pounds of
personal expenses - including utility bills, interior
design, landscaping, furniture and appliances - for
several private homes and a public palace that was
fraudulently transferred to their ownership.
Other expenses included renovating a villa, and
building a new palace wing to accommodate one of
Mr Mubarak's granddaughters and a mausoleum
for a grandson who died, they said.
Evidence submitted by the prosecutors included
more than a thousand original and forged receipts.
When a new court is assigned for the retrial, the
judges could order Mr Mubarak to be freed
because no convictions against him remain.
Egyptian media report that he had been expected
to be released from the military hospital at Maadi
on 17 January even if the embezzlement
conviction had been upheld because of the time he
has spent in custody.