AN EGYPTIAN COURT has dismissed a murder charge against ousted president Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters during a 2011 uprising that ended the former strongman’s decades-long rule.
The court also acquitted Mubarak of a corruption charge, but he will remain in prison because he is serving a three-year sentence in a separate corruption case.
Seven of his security commanders, including the feared former interior minister Habib al-Adly, were acquitted over the demonstrator deaths.
Cheers broke out in the courtroom and Mubarak’s two sons and co-defendants stooped down to kiss his forehead when the judge read out the verdict, as Mubarak lay in an upright stretcher inside the caged dock.
The ruling came after a dramatic retrial in which the former president defended his 30-year rule.
An appeals court overturned an initial life sentence for Mubarak in 2012 on a technicality.
His lawyer Farid al-Deeb told AFP that Saturday’s verdict was “a good ruling that proved the integrity of Mubarak’s era.”
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