Egypt court orders release of Mubarak's sons pending retrial

CAIRO - Agence France-Presse

A file picture taken on June 8, 2013 shows the sons of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Gamal (L) and Alaa (R) behind the defendants' cage during their retrial at the Police Academy in Cairo. AFP Photo

A lawyer for the sons of Egypt's ousted President Hosni Mubarak said a court ordered their release on Jan. 22 pending retrial in a corruption case but judicial sources said they would not be freed until prosecutors review other legal cases against them.
   
Lawyer Farid el-Deeb said the order for the release of Alaa and Gamal Mubarak pending the retrial should mean they immediately walk free because he said they were not being tried in any other cases.
   
The Mubarak brothers do still face charges of stock market manipulation in a separate case, but in June 2013 a court ordered their release in that case.
   
Given that a court dropped other corruption charges against the sons in yet another case in November, it appeared there were no other cases preventing their release.
   
The Cairo Criminal Court said in a document explaining its ruling that the two men had already served the maximum permitted time of 18 months in pretrial detention and should therefore not be held pending their retrial in a corruption case.
   
The retrial was ordered by Egypt's high court earlier this month..
   
In May, his sons had been given four-year jail terms in the same case, while the 86-year-old former president received a three-year sentence.
   
They were charged with diverting public funds earmarked to renovate presidential palaces and using the money to upgrade family properties.
   
It was not immediately clear why the court did not also order Mubarak's release.
   
Suffering from ill health, he has been serving his sentence in a military hospital in the upscale Maadi district of Cairo.
   
Judicial sources have said he could soon walk free as no convictions remain against him after the high court ordered a retrial in the embezzlement case.
  
In November, a court dropped charges against Mubarak of conspiring to kill protesters in the uprising that ended his 30-year rule.