Egypt’s ex-president Hosni Mubarak, who was convicted over the death of protesters, was on Monday heading back to prison from a military hospital after the prosecutor general ordered his transfer.
“He is in the ambulance and is on his way to Tora prison” in southern Cairo, a security official told AFP.
Egypt’s prosecutor general ordered Mubarak to be returned to jail nearly a month after he was moved to a military hospital in Cairo after reportedly suffering a stroke. Abdel Meguid Mahmud “has issued an order to transfer former president Hosni Mubarak from the Maadi Armed Forces Hospital to Tora prison hospital after an improvement in his health,” the prosecutor general’s office said.
On July 4, Mahmud had ordered the formation of a committee of medical experts to look into the 84-year-old Mubarak’s health, and determine whether he could be moved back to jail, deputy prosecutor general Adel al-Saeed said. The doctors agreed that “Mubarak’s health is currently stable with medication, and it is considered good for someone of his age,” Saeed said. The committee found “no reason for the convict to currently remain in the Armed Forces Hospital in Maadi or any other hospital” with special facilities, he said. Mubarak’s health was clouded in uncertainty following his move to hospital on June 19, with state media declaring him clinically dead on arrival at a military medical facility.
But medical sources said he was in a coma and on an artificial respirator. On June 2, Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the death of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended his three-decade rule. His health deteriorated after the transfer, with doctors defibrillating him twice last month, and reports saying he was suffering from bouts of depression, high blood pressure and shortness of breath. His morale was said to have plunged again after news of Islamist Mohamed Morsi’s victory in the presidential election last month. Morsi, candidate of the formerly banned Muslim Brotherhood, was confirmed as Egypt’s first democratically elected civilian president on June 24. Mubarak, the only autocrat toppled in the Arab Spring to be tried in person, was sentenced to life in prison along with his former interior minister Habib al-Adly over their involvement in the deaths of some of the estimated 850 people killed in the uprising.
The acquittal of six security chiefs in the same case sparked mass protests for days. Mubarak was held at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh following his arrest last year, before the military overseeing the transition appeared to bow to protester demands that he and former regime officials face trial. The ex-president was brought to Cairo for the trial, which began on August 3, 2011. At the hearings, Mubarak was wheeled into the lecture hall that served as a courtroom on a stretcher. He reportedly has a heart condition, but the health ministry has denied his lawyer’s assertion that he has cancer.
