Egyptian court orders retrial in Mubarak corruption case

PanARMENIAN.Net - A court in Egypt has overturned the convictions for embezzlement of former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons and ordered a retrial, BBC News reports.

Mubarak was jailed for three years in May after being found guilty of fraudulently billing the government for $14mln of personal expenses. But the Court of Cassation found legal procedures were not followed properly.

Mubarak's lawyer told the BBC the 86-year-old would soon be released from detention at a Cairo military hospital. It was the last remaining case keeping Mubarak behind bars.

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.

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 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 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 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 Jan 17 even if the embezzlement conviction was upheld because he has been in custody since April 2011.