Although the trial was widely criticized for failing to take stock of 30 years of political violence and corruption under Mr. Mubarak, the ruling is nonetheless Egypt’s most significant step yet toward establishing the principle that no leader is above the law. The country is still awaiting an elected president, a new Constitution and the exit of its current military rulers.
Judge Rafaat called Mr. Mubarak’s rule “30 years of intense darkness, black black black, the blackness of a chilly winter night.” He also waxed poetic about the uprising that ended Mr. Mubarak’s rule.
“The peaceful sons of the homeland came out of every deep ravine with all the pain they experienced from injustice, heartbreak, humiliation and oppression,” he said. “Bearing the burden of their suffering on their shoulders, they moved peacefully toward Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, demanding only justice, freedom and democracy.”
Mr. Mubarak’s government, the judge said, “committed the gravest sins, tyranny and corruption without accountability or oversight as their consciences died, their feelings became numb and their hearts in their chests turned blind.”
The verdict is almost certain to be appealed, and lawyers involved have said that many questionable procedural decisions during the yearlong trial had left ample grounds to continue the legal fight. Convicting Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Adly on the basis that they failed to stop police from killing protesters would not normally meet the standards of international or Egyptian law for a murder conviction.
“We will be in this for years,” said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, waiting outside the trial.
A political battle over the fairness of the ruling has already begun. It comes as a former Mubarak protégé who served as his last prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, is competing against the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood in a runoff to settle Egypt’s first competitive presidential election. While Mr. Shafik has capitalized on a yearning for a return to the relative stability of the Mubarak years, his opponents accuse him of plotting a restoration of the old system behind a new face and hope reaction to the verdict will galvanize public opinion against him. His critics charge that if elected he would pardon his former boss.
If the verdict stirs a new wave of protests, however, that could also increase the receptiveness to Mr. Shafik’s core promise to restore law and order. The families of those killed during last year’s uprising have threatened to go to the streets over a light sentence, and many liberal and leftist activists have said they will, as well.
The verdict may also stir tensions with Egypt’s conservative neighbors. Saudi Arabia, a monarchy fearful of calls for democracy, has pushed hard in Cairo and Washington to avoid the public humiliation of a ruler who was once a pillar of the old order. And it is holding billions of dollars in promised aid Egypt desperately needs.
Mr. Mubarak is the second Arab ruler ever to face trial, following the 2005 legal proceedings and hanging of Saddam Hussein of Iraq — a rushed execution that undermined the credibility of Iraq’s judicial system and inflamed sectarian resentments.
Whether the verdict in Mr. Mubarak’s case advances or hinders Egypt’s steps toward the rule of law will depend in part on his appeals and further trials. In another case seen as a test of the rule of law three years ago, Hussein Talaat Mustafa, the politically connected real estate tycoon and lawmaker, was sentenced to death for ordering the murder of a Lebanese starlet, only to have the penalty reduced on appeal to a few years in prison.
Human rights advocates and some politicians, including the presidential candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, are already talking about additional trials for Mr. Mubarak or a special truth commission to examine more fully the abuses under his 30 year rule.
In the parking lot outside the police academy used as a courthouse, the crowd exploded with joy at the verdict, screaming, crying and tossing water bottles into the air.
“I am so happy, this is the greatest happiness I have ever felt,” said Rada Mohamed Mabrouk, a 60-year-old retiree in a black cloak. “The martyrs are all of our children.”
Others said they were stunned that only Mr. Mubarak and his interior minister were convicted. “They are all innocent of corruption, when everyone knows they were all corrupt from beginning to end,” said Mostafa Fathy, 28, a demonstrator from the impoverished neighborhood of Imbaba who came to await the ruling from outside the court. “To be honest this is the opposite verdict from what we all expected.”
Other demonstrators brandished nooses to symbolize the sentence they sought. “We wanted them to be slaughtered, not given life or let go,” said Hamad Essam, 37, a laborer. “This is not right. The final judge is God.”
Hanan Mohamed el-Rifai, 28, of Alexandria said that on January 28 police killed her little brother Kareem, 15, with a bullet to his heart. “They are all innocent? Gamal and Alaa are innocent? We will protest,” she said outside the court. “We will turn the world upside down. We will go to Tahrir and protest and we will protest in Alexandria.”
The credibility of the Mubarak trial was in many ways compromised from the start. It took place under military rule by a council of generals who took power at his ouster. The court operates under a patchwork of old laws and military declaration instead of a permanent Constitution. The generals, judges and prosecutors were all Mubarak appointees. The degree of judicial independence was never clear. All acted under the extraordinary political pressures unleashed by the revolution, and the lack of transparency has invited conspiracy theories about behind-the-scenes machinations of the generals and judges.
Mr. Mubarak has awaited the verdict in the comfort of a military hospital rather than a prison. His lawyers have said his health is failing and required him to attend the trial sessions on a hospital gurney. But an inquiry by the newly elected Parliament found him in fair health, and both a local newspaper, el Watan, and the news service Reuters reported this week that hospital employees said he was in good health and comfortable circumstances, visited by family and foreign dignitaries and swimming regularly in the hospital pool. His wife, Suzanne, was said to bring him new track suits to cheer him up and also cater his favorite foods because he is unhappy with the hospital fare.
Instead of a sweeping examination the systemic abuses under Mr. Mubarak, the prosecutors rushed this case to trial last April in an apparent attempt to placate street protesters. The announcement of the case came just days after Mr. Mubarak made a defiant public statement over the radio that fired up demands for justice against him.
Prosecutors charged Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Adly with directing police to shoot unarmed protesters during just the first six days of the protests that ended his rule. Although Health Ministry officials say about 840 civilians were killed during the protests and many others injured, prosecutors ultimately narrowed the case to address only about 250 deaths that took place in public squares and other areas far from police stations, where police have more latitude to shoot to defend their facilities.
Prosecutors never presented evidence that Mr. Mubarak or Mr. Adly ever gave a direct order to use deadly force to crush the protests. Instead, prosecutors relied on more speculative arguments that police could not have acted without instructions from above, or that Mr. Mubarak failed to stop the violence — arguments that under normal circumstances would not justify a murder conviction under Egyptian or international law.
In the same case, the prosecutors also charged Mr. Mubarak and his two sons with one instance of corruption. The prosecutors claimed the Mubarak’s had received steep discounts on several luxurious vacation homes near the Red Sea from a crony, Hussein Salem, now awaiting extradition from Spain. Mr. Mubarak, meanwhile, allowed companies controlled by Mr. Salem to make profitable deals to resell Egyptian natural gas to Israel and buy public land on the Red Sea for development.
But the prosecution never established an explicit quid pro quo bribe. Under American law, such a pattern of apparent favor-swapping by a public official without evidence of an overt deal would amount only to an illegal “gratuity,” with a sentence of up to two years.
The trial proceedings went on for more than 40 sessions totally more than 100 days over the course of ten months, with more than a thousand witnesses and tens of thousands of pages of evidence.
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Kareem Fahim, Mayy El Sheikh and Liam Stack contributed reporting. The New York Times