Reuters/Cairo/Sharm El Sheikh
Egyptians and their fellow Arabs were enthralled yesterday by the unprecedented sight of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, a leader of the region for three decades and the Arab Spring’s biggest scalp, being wheeled into court to face trial. Outside the courtroom in Cairo, they watched on a big screen as the octogenarian, who ruled Egypt for 30 years, lay on a hospital bed connected to a drip and denied involvement in the killing of protesters who ousted him. “I don’t believe this ... to see a president being tried ... I never imagined it. I am so happy, I feel tomorrow will be better and that the next president knows what could happen to him if he goes against his people,” Ahmed Amer, 30, an employee in a water service company, said outside the court complex. Egyptians crowded into cafes, kiosks, anywhere with a television to follow the trial. Traffic on Cairo’s notoriously clogged streets thinned, as people in Egypt and across the Arab world watched what many saw as history in the making. A Bahraini activist called Online Bahrain addressed other autocrats across the Arab world: “Dear Arab dictator, take a long hard look at Mubarak. He was just as powerful as you were. Your time is up if you don’t change.” Some thought it would inspire those protesters trying to oust their own leaders, such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who has used his military to try to crush an uprising against his rule. “The trial no doubt inspires Syrians and raises their hopes of the victory of their cause for freedom...to see those implicated in the bloodletting of Syrians and theft of the wealth of Syria put behind bars,” said Imadeddin al-Rashid, an Islamic law professor who fled Syria. The opening of the trial coincided with a push by Syrian forces into the heart of Hama. In Yemen, protesters were glued to small television sets they had brought into the tents where they camped out in Sanaa. Mubarak was not the first Arab leader to fall in the Arab Spring, but he is the first to stand trial in person. Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled first, fled to Saudi Arabia and was tried in absentia. There are contrasts with the trial of Iraq’s Saddam Hussain, kicked out of office by a US-led force and not his own people. If convicted, Mubarak could face the death penalty, though few expect that outcome even if some protesters wish it. Inside the cage with Mubarak, 83, were his two sons, Gamal, once viewed as a future president, and Alaa, who had business interests. They too denied the charges. Alongside them were former interior minister Habib al-Adly and other officials. Some dismissed the proceedings. A government adviser in Saudi Arabia criticised putting Mubarak on trial. “You realise that these idiotic people are going to destroy whatever is left of the Egyptian state, this is a masquerade,” the adviser said. “This is a humiliating spectacle for everyone. There us nothing to be proud of. Time will tell.” But the dramatic images won over some Egyptians who have been frustrated by the protests that have disrupted their lives. “I used to oppose the revolution at first. I criticised the youth in Tahrir Square and those who protested. But seeing that their efforts have finally brought this pharaoh to court, I must say that I salute the revolution and the youth of Egypt,” said Ali Abdullah, a shop owner in Sharm El Sheikh, the Red Sea resort where Mubarak was exiled and in hospital after he quit.A father’s curse: ‘May God burn his heart’His arm in a sling and his head bandaged, Mohamed Morsi, still mourning his son, looked across the room at the cage that held Egypt’s fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak and cursed, almost under his breath. “May God burn his heart.” Minutes earlier, a prosecutor listed some of the roughly 850 names of victims who, like Morsi’s son, died during the revolt that deposed Mubarak, and then judge Ahmed Refaat turned to the ex-president and asked him for his plea. Mubarak, in a stretcher, and obscured by his two sons and co-defendants who stood at the front of the black metal cage where the defendants were penned, responded in a strangled voice: “All these charges, I completely deny.” Until the minute his medical helicopter landed, there was still disbelief Mubarak would appear in the cage. But there he was, the once proud leader lying weak on a stretcher, hair dyed black in defiance of his 83 years, his arm over his face one moment, hands behind his head another, seething quietly as lawyers hurled indignities at him. “God gives sovereignty to whom he pleases, and takes away sovereignty from whom he pleases. God glorifies whom he wills, and he humiliates whom he wills,” one of the victims’ lawyers, quoting the Qur’an, recited to the judge. It was an epic downfall, unthinkable just six months ago, a once absolute ruler now a caged infirm. A friend of a man who was injured during the January and February revolt said he felt sorry for the former president. “I feel sympathy for him,” said the man, who gave his name as Zurin Fadel, during a court recess. “It’s insulting for this happen to someone like the president,” he said. Mubarak’s sons tried to spare him the embarrassment of the prying camera airing the trial live to 80mn Egyptians, more used to seeing him in flattering posters or striding purposefully alongside world leaders. And the security arrangements seemed calculated to shield the ex-president as much as possible. His cage in the corner, shared by his two sons, former interior minister Habib al-Adly and six former police commanders, was surrounded by plainclothes guards and the nearby benches filled by tired police conscripts, all enclosed by yet more metal mesh fencing. “That’s the point,” said a police general when reporters complained that they could not clearly see the defendants from their seats. But the trial was surprisingly transparent in another sense, plodding along for almost four hours as the judge considered lawyers’ requests for witness lists and documents. Morsi, who was wounded on Monday when soldiers and police cleared a protest by activists and relatives of the revolt’s victims, said he was heartened by the proceedings, but said all that counted was the verdict. “The people who killed our children must be jailed. They must be executed,” he said. A man with the words “Egypt comes first” written in Arabic on his forehead gestures next to a poster depicting Hosni Mubarak outside the police academy in Cairo where the ousted president went on trial yesterday