December 04, 2014

Egyptian court freed Mubarak, and sentenced 188 protesters to die

located:	Egypt
editor:	Murat Suner

With the exception of Tunisia, we witnessed how the assumption, that the Arab Spring could have been the beginning of a sustainable democratization process in Arabic societies, has been destroyed. Across the Middle East and North African region, Syria at foremost, and certainly Egypt, are the most significant examples of this backward course.

As if history was following the script of Büchner's drama Danton's Death from 1835 the revolution eats its children - piece by piece.

On Friday, an Egyptian court dismissed all charges against the previous Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak stemming from the murder of 239 democracy protesters in 2011.

"Ever since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led a coup against the country’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the coup regime has become increasingly repressive, brutal and lawless" Glenn Greenwald points out in The Intercept.

The Sisi record has obviously even worsened when on Friday, an Egyptian court dismissed all charges against the previous Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak originating from the murder of 239 democracy protesters in 2011.

According to Greenwald "the ruling also cleared his interior minister and six other aides. It also cleared him and his two sons of corruption charges, while upholding a corruption charge that will almost certainly entail no further prison time. The ruling was based on a mix of conspiracy theories and hyper-technical and highly dubious legal findings."

As if this de facto immunization of Mubarak was not enough "188 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who participated in anti-Sisi protests that led to the deaths of 11 police officers, were handed death sentences today en masse" continues Greenwald.

The New York Times reports that there was “no effort to prove that any individual defendant personally killed any of the officers; that more than 100 of the defendants were not allowed to have lawyers; and that scores of defense witnesses were excluded from the courtroom.”

According to the Times “Egypt today is in many ways more repressive than it was during the darkest periods of the reign of deposed strongman Hosni Mubarak.”