In the latest twist in the legal battle surrounding the ousted autocrat, an Egyptian court on Saturday postponed its verdict in the murder retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak to November. Before adjourning the hearing on Saturday, the judge said he and members of the prosecution team had not finished reviewing all the evidence in the case, which amounted to 160,000 pages. A TV screen in the courtroom showed thousands of documents related to the case piled up in folders and bound with string. Mubarak, 86, arrived at court in a medical helicopter and was wheeled out the back on a stretcher surrounded by police clutching rifles. He appeared with fellow defendants in a courtroom cage, looking pale and glum and wearing sunglasses.
This is a case for the nation not a small dispute.
Presiding Judge Mahmoud Kamel el-Rashid
Mubarak is accused alongside seven of his former police commanders of involvement in the killing of hundreds of demonstrators during the 2011 uprising that ended his three-decade rule. An appeals court overturned his initial life sentence on a technicality. Mubarak – separately sentenced to three years in prison for corruption – told the court in August that at the age of 86 he was approaching the end of his life “with a good conscience”.