Mubarak's release draws mixed reactions in Egypt
While supporters of former President Hosni Mubarak celebrated his release, others in Egypt lament that many activists still languish behind prison bars.
On March 24, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was freed from detention after he was cleared earlier this month of the charge of ordering the killing of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 mass uprising that toppled him. He discreetly left the military hospital in southern Cairo where he had been under house arrest for the last six years to return to his home in the upscale Cairo district of Heliopolis.
Egyptians received the news of his release with mixed reactions. Many of his supporters were overcome with joy, saying the revolution was a “foreign conspiracy” and that his acquittal “is long overdue.”
“Mubarak is my president to this day. I am delighted to hear that he has returned home,” Amgad Zekry, a 29-year-old taxi driver, told Al-Monitor. “He is a hero of the October 1973 war and should never have been subjected to such humiliation. Egypt was stable and secure under his rule,” he added.
But for the pro-democracy activists who took to the streets six years ago demanding “bread, freedom and social justice,” Mubarak’s release is a “hard blow,” dashing what little hope they had left for positive change. Lawyer Malek Adly, who was released in September after spending four months in jail for challenging President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s decision to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, considers it a telling moment.
