CAIRO — Former President Hosni Mubarak sat up, waved and even smirked as he appeared at a hearing Saturday to open his retrial on charges related to the killing of protesters at the end of his rule.
The appearance in court was the first time that Mubarak, 84, had been seen in public in nearly a year, and it was brief. The presiding judge, Mustafa Hassan Abdullah, ended the session almost as soon as it began by recusing himself, citing a conflict of interest, presumably because he had ruled in related cases. The postponement was not unexpected; procedural delays for one reason or another are common in Egyptian trials.
Left to puzzle over Mubarak’s improved demeanor, many Egyptians said that he appeared to be displaying a new confidence in his case or perhaps a certain schadenfreude about the state of the country since his ouster.
“His smiling, confident expression is a very good symbol of how much has changed in the last two years since the case began,” said Magda Boutros, the criminal justice reform director at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
His supporters, she said, say that “he was right from the start to threaten that it was either him or chaos, which is more or less what we are seeing now.”
When Mubarak appeared in court a few months after he was forced from power in February 2011, viewers were transfixed by the televised image of the former autocrat lying on a hospital stretcher in the metal cage used in Egyptian courts as a dock. His two sons, on trial with him for corruption, stood together in front of him to try to shield him from humiliation. Mubarak was filmed at one session picking his nose.
Over the two years since, his attorneys have leaked recurring reports about his failing health in an apparent effort to win him sympathy or better treatment. A false report from Egypt’s state news agency in June even pronounced him “clinically dead,” although his attorneys later said that, in fact, he had slipped in the shower, received treatment for a blood clot and recovered. He remains in a military hospital on the Nile in Cairo rather than in prison because of concerns about his health.
On Saturday morning, Mubarak was again wheeled into the court on a stretcher, wearing dark sunglasses and a white jogging suit. But instead of crossing his hands over his chest like an enfeebled patient, he cradled them under his head to prop it up and look around. He waved to the courtroom several times with the signature turn of the wrist he used as an all-powerful autocrat addressing his people.
Although his lips were pursed, Mubarak turned up the corners of his mouth several times in an unmistakable smile.
When the judge recused himself, chaos erupted briefly in the courtroom as advocates for civilians killed during the revolution shouted for revenge.
“The people want the execution of the ousted!” they chanted. But the protest was tame compared with the courtroom uproar of his original trial, and the crowds of supporters and opponents outside the courthouse were much smaller, too.
Mubarak is expected to remain in custody while the courts seek a new judge, which could take months. And when the retrial begins, it is expected to last for months.
