1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
Politics

Ousted Egyptian President Mubarak freed from detention

March 24, 2017

Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been released from detention. The 88-year-old former leader has spent much of the past six years in hospital.

Ägypten Ex-räsident Mubarak Maadi Militärkrankenhaus
A file photo from 2016 shows Mubarak waving to supporters from a Cairo military hospital. Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/A. nabil

After six years in detention, Hosni Mubarak walked free from a military hospital in Cairo on Friday.

An appeals court earlier this month acquitted Mubarak of ordering the death of protestors during the 2011 revolution that toppled him after 30 years in power. About 850 protestors were killed in police clashes with demonstrators during the 18-day revolt.

The 88-year-old and his two sons were convicted to a three year sentence and ordered to pay millions of dollars in fines for embezzlement of state funds. An appeals court in 2016 upheld the conviction but took into account time already served.

Mubarak was arrested in April 2011, two months after he was ousted. He has spent most of the time in a military hospital.  

In 2012, a court handed him a life sentence for murdering 239 demonstrators, but an appeals court in 2014 ordered a retrial and the case was dropped.

Nearly two dozen former Mubarak-era officials in recent years have been acquitted of their role in corruption and protestor deaths.  

Meanwhile, hundreds of pro-democracy activists and Islamist politicians have been rounded up as President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi consolidates power after toppling Mubarak's Islamist successor after one year in office.

After the Storm - Part 1

42:30

This browser does not support the video element.

cw/kms (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Skip next section Explore more
Skip next section DW's Top Story

DW's Top Story

Skip next section More stories from DW