Mubarak could face death penalty in high-profile trial

IN his last address to the nation as president, Hosni Mubarak vowed he would never leave his homeland and would die on its soil. His decision not to flee Egypt may carry a heavy price.

Today, Mubarak is to be tried for conspiring to kill protesters who drove him from office on February 11 after 30 years at the helm. If convicted, he could face the death penalty, although few expect that outcome.

As a visible example of the change that has swept Egypt, the court has been set up in a Cairo Police Academy that once bore his name in big concrete letters, which have since been torn down.

The trial of a man who fashioned himself a leader of the Arab world will be felt beyond Egypt’s borders, reverberating across a region where other longtime rulers face unprecedented challenges from protesters or armed rebellions.

“I and Egypt will not part until I am buried in its soil,” Mubarak said on February 10, the day before he was ousted. He was dressed sombrely with the black tie he has worn since his grandson died in 2009.

A day later the military he once commanded took over and he was whisked off to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh amid jubilation on the streets. Since April, he has been in hospital there. A source close to him said last week that his lawyer would tell the judge Mubarak was too ill to attend trial.

If he turns up he will be the first Arab leader to stand trial after uprisings toppled him as well as Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia in January.

If Mubarak fails to show up, that is likely to anger protesters determined to see the former president in the dock. They accuse him of ruling the country as a personal fiefdom, allowing his family and allies to profit, while swathes of the country were stuck in dire poverty, and of crushing opposition with an iron fist.

Mubarak always presented himself as a fatherly figure protecting the nation — a manner that increasingly grated with the public. Speculation that he was grooming his son Gamal for the presidency added to anger on the street.

Until January 25, when protests erupted with a force that seemed to surprise even some of the demonstrators who organised them, Mubarak had looked like an almost immovable force. Jokes had abounded about his longevity. But 18 days later he was out.

He was not the first Arab leader to be toppled. But the fall of the leader of the Arab world’s most populous nation carried greater weight.