Egyptian army soldiers guard with armoured personnel carriers in front of the main gate of Torah prison where former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is detained, on the outskirts of Cairo, Aug. 21, 2013. Deposed leader Mubarak will leave jail soon after a court ruling that jolted a divided nation already in turmoil seven weeks after the army toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.AMR ABDALLAH DALSH/Reuters
Deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has won his release from prison for what may well be legitimate legal reasons. But the timing of the court decision is dangerously provocative and sure to fuel fears that the country's discredited old guard is out to reassert its decades-long control of Egypt's political, judicial and economic levers.
While Mr. Mubarak will soon be waiting comfortably at home for future court appearances – including his appeal of a guilty verdict over his role in the deaths of demonstrators agitating for his removal in 2011 – his successor Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first popularly elected president, and hundreds of Islamist supporters languish in detention. Hundreds more have been massacred in assaults on mainly unarmed protesters. Even as the court was ordering the release of the 85-year-old Mr. Mubarak on Wednesday, security forces were rounding up more key figures connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has also been around for 85 years, as part of a concerted effort to wipe out the main organized political opposition to the military-led regime.
Many Egyptians welcomed the military intervention that deposed Mr. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, because they feared for the future of a democracy that Islamist forces seemed bent on subverting. Now they may be (and should be) wondering how serious the military is about restoring those democratic freedoms.
Mr. Mubarak had earlier been granted bail while pursuing his appeal of a life sentence over the killings of about 800 people who flocked to the huge public rallies that led to his ouster. But he remained in prison over a corruption charge related to gifts he had allegedly accepted from the state-owned Al Ahram newspaper. The court set aside that case, noted that he had agreed to reimburse the state for their value and ruled that time limits to detain him on other charges had expired. These charges could still put Mr. Mubarak back in the dock. And he faces a retrial over the protesters' deaths, after the appeal court overturned his guilty ruling.
But the government itself now has bloody hands, after the unprovoked killings of an even larger number of demonstrators. It has crushed political dissent and imposed a state of emergency. And the fact remains that the deposed dictator is free, while the elected president is not.
As rights get trampled underneath the boots of security forces, a return to the fragile democracy established in the wake of Mr. Mubarak's ouster and suspended by the military coup last month seems but a distant hope.