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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.
Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak waves from his room at the Maadi military hospital in Cairo on May 4, 2015 as his supporters gather outside the building for his birthday. An Egyptian court is expected to examine on May 7, 2015 an appeal filed by the prosecution against a lower court's verdict that dropped murder charges against Mubarak and also acquitted six of his top security chiefs of charges of killing protesters during the 2011 uprising. Standing behind Mubarak is a doctor. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMED E

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.”

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