Egypt court frees Mubarak sons pending corruption retrial

An Egyptian court Thursday ordered the release of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's two sons pending their retrial on corruption charges, a judicial official said.

Their lawyer Farid al-Deeb told AFP Alaa and Gamal Mubarak were free to leave prison after the court order because they had served the maximum pretrial detention period.

Earlier this month, an appeals court ordered their retrial, along with their father, overturning a lower court conviction that saw the two given four-year jail sentences.

Deeb said the elder Mubarak, who is in a military hospital, would also be freed, but state media reported that there had been no orders yet for his release.

In November, a court also dropped murder charges against the former president over the deaths of some of the roughly 800 protesters killed during the uprising that unseated him in 2011.

Along with Mubarak, seven security commanders were acquitted of involvement in those deaths.

Alaa and Gamal still face a separate trial for stock market manipulation. 

The release of the Mubaraks presents a dilemma for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who toppled Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohammad Morsi, an Islamist, in 2013.

Sisi won a presidential election in 2014 by over 96 percent, leading to criticism that he has restored Mubarak-era practices.

After the court's announcement, several dozen alleged Islamist protesters tried to hold a protest in central Cairo but police dispersed them, an interior ministry official told AFP.

Morsi, a leader of the Islamist opposition under Mubarak, is himself now on trial over violence during the 2011 uprising in which protesters torched police stations across the country.

Critics say such charges - pinning the blame of police violence during the revolt on Islamists - are a revision of history that tars the uprising as a plot by Islamists and foreign powers against Egypt.

Sisi himself has dismissed such allegations - and wary of appearing as a Mubarak-era loyalist himself – has said he would decree legislation banning "insults" to the uprising as well as the 2013 protests that prompted the army to remove Morsi.