Egypt's Hosni Mubarak jailed for embezzlement
The three were accused of diverting $17.6m of public funds to renovate their own private residences
A
court in Egypt has sentenced former President Hosni Mubarak to three
years in prison after finding him guilty of embezzling public funds.
The three were also fined $3m (£1.8m) and ordered to repay the $17.6m they were accused of stealing.
Mubarak, 86, is also on trial for abuse of power and conspiring in the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that forced him to resign.
He was found guilty of the charge relating to the protesters in 2012 along with former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly, and sentenced to life in prison.
But in January 2013 the Court of Cassation upheld an appeal by the two men against their convictions on technical grounds and ordered a retrial.
Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, along with their father, insisted the prosecution's case was "unsubstantiated"
Gamal, the president's one-time heir apparent, and Alaa, a businessman, are also being retried on separate corruption charges.
In court, a small number of journalists were joined by a handful of Mubarak loyalists. The aged former leader was seated in a wheelchair, his hair still improbably black. He was flanked by his sons - the embezzlement was a family affair. Mubarak appeared alert as the brief session began, but betrayed no emotion.
After the verdict a few supporters showed their anger outside, some shouting at police. One man claimed, through tears, that Hosni Mubarak had been convicted now - just before the presidential election - for political reasons.
But the protesters numbered around half a dozen or so - a striking indication of how little public support or public attention Hosni Mubarak commands these days.
Most Egyptians appear to have lost interest in the man who ruled for three decades, and who once seemed immovable.
In February, the Mubaraks were accused of diverting $17.6m meant for maintenance of presidential palaces to renovate their own private residences in Cairo and on the Red Sea coast, as well as a family farm.
They denied the charge and asserted at the trial that the prosecution's case was "completely unsubstantiated because it never happened".
But on Wednesday, Judge Osama Shaheen told the court: "He should have treated people close and far from him equally.
"Instead of abiding by the constitution and laws, he gave himself and his sons the freedom to take from public funds whatever they wanted to without oversight and without regard."
Mubarak sat in the caged dock in a wheelchair, wearing a grey suit. His sons stood beside him in white prison uniforms.
Mubarak will be moved to prison from the Maadi Military Hospital, where he has been under house arrest
Four other defendants in the case were acquitted.
It was not immediately clear whether the 23 months that Mubarak and his sons have spent in custody would count towards their sentences.
Egyptians vote in a presidential election next month that former military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, who served as military intelligence chief under Mubarak, is widely expected to win.
In other developments on Wednesday:
- Some 155 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were given long jail terms
- At least one person was killed in a bomb attack in the Sinai near the border with Israel, according to Reuters news agency.
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