Egypt's Mubarak to face retrial over killing of protesters

Egypt's Court of Cassation, the country's highest judicial authority, ordered on Thursday retrial of former long-time President Hosni Mubarak over killing of protesters in the 2011 uprising that ended up with his ouster.

Last November, Mubarak was acquitted in the same case, along with his interior minister Habib al-Adly and six of his aides, and the prosecution appealed their acquittal later in December.

The Court of Cassation on Thursday accepted the appeal only against Mubarak's acquittal and scheduled his retrial for November 5, while the previous acquittals of his interior minister and others were approved and cannot be further appealed.

Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for responsibility over the killing of peaceful demonstrators in early 2011, but the Court of Appeal ordered his retrial which, after several postponements, was held last November and resulted in his acquittal.

Earlier in May, the 87-year-old ex-president, currently detained at a military hospital in the capital Cairo due to health problems, and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, were sentenced to three years in jail after their retrial in a corruption case related to the expenses of the presidential palaces.

Following the 2011 protests, Mubarak, his two sons, his interior minister and most of his men were arrested over various charges ranging from corruption to ordering the kill of protesters, but most of them have been acquitted of the charges.

Meanwhile, Egyptian courts are currently holding mass trials for thousands of supporters of Mubarak's successor, former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the military in July 2013 following mass protests against his one-year rule.

Morsi along with more than 100 other defendants have recently been handed appealable death sentences over their roles in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 protest.

Since Morsi's ouster, security crackdown against his loyalists left more than 1,000 of them killed and thousands more arrested, while the Muslim Brotherhood group has been blacklisted by the new military-oriented leadership as "a terrorist organization."

On Thursday, a criminal court in Upper Egypt's Sohag province sentenced 51 Brotherhood defendants from three to ten years in prison over violent acts that killed four people and injured two policemen during the referendum on the post-Morsi new constitution held in January 2014.

On the other hand, extremist, self-proclaimed Islamists have been launching terrorist attacks against police and military men and facilities that killed hundreds of them.

Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) group, which has changed its name to "Sinai State" as an affiliate of the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group, claimed responsibility for most of the anti-government attacks that killed hundreds of security men since Morsi's overthrow in mid-2013.

On Thursday, a security source told Xinhua that the Egyptian security forces killed nine ABM militants via two air raids on their hideouts at south of Sheikh Zuweid city of North Sinai, noting that the forces foiled three blast attempts that targeted them in the area.

Egypt has recently executed six members of a Sinai-based militant group as a military court convicted them of carrying out attacks on soldiers near Cairo last year.

The country's newest constitution, drafted and approved after Morsi's removal, allows military trials for civilians in crimes related to assaulting military facilities or those relevant to them.

The current leadership links the currently-outlawed Brotherhood group to the Sinai terrorists, and the prosecution has recently been referring dozens of Brotherhood members and affiliates to military trials as well.

Prosecutors in Beni Suef province, some 120 km south of Cairo, referred 216 Brotherhood members and loyalists to the military prosecution over charges of violence and murder committed in reaction to the dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins in mid-August 2013, state-run Al-Ahram news website reported on Thursday.

Similarly, the Egyptian prosecution earlier in May referred 61 affiliates of the Brotherhood group to military trial over terrorist activities and plots.

In its annual report released last week, Egypt's National Council for Human Rights said that the violence since Morsi's removal resulted in the deaths of total 2,600 people, including 700 police and army men, 550 civilians and 1,250 Brotherhood members and supporters. Enditem