CAIRO — A verdict is expected Saturday in 86-year-old Hosni Mubarak’s trial on charges connected to the killing of more than 900 protesters against his rule. But Egypt’s “trial of the century,” initially watched with excitement, largely has dropped from public attention. That’s partly because of how drawn-out the process has been — with a trial and retrial — and partly because subsequent upheaval has flipped the political narrative.
The revolutionary fervor of 2011 largely has been extinguished, replaced among many Egyptians by exhaustion from nearly four years of turmoil. Many of the pro-democracy activists central to the uprising are in prison for attempting to protest against the new president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Others are dismissed in the media as troublemakers, while the police — who, in the revolutionaries’ eyes, were the hated tools of Mubarak oppression — are now lauded in the press as heroes in a fight against Islamists.
