The difficulty of moving Hosni Mubarak to a prison hospital in Cairo shifted attention to the serious accusations levelled against the deposed president, Gamal Essam El-Din reports After a week of conflicting reports, Prosecutor- General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud clarified the situation of Hosni Mubarak: the health of the deposed president was too precarious for him to be taken to the Tora prison hospital south of Cairo or even to the well-equipped military medical centre on the Cairo-Ismailia desert road. Mahmoud explained that "several health and security issues make moving Mubarak out of Sharm El-Sheikh Hospital quite dangerous and risky." Mahmoud's announcement on 26 April came after a third medical examination of Mubarak to determine if he was fit enough to be moved. It also came after he had ordered on 24 April a team of forensic doctors to examine Mubarak to determine if it was possible to move him to the prison hospital of Tora. El-Sebaai Ahmed El-Sebaai, head of the team, visited Mubarak and issued a report which said, "Mubarak suffers from heart palpitations and severe melancholy yet it is possible to question him over corruption and murder allegations provided he is in a hospital that has an intensive care unit. "The Tora prison hospital lacks an ICU and it takes at least one month until such a room is fitted and becomes operative," indicated El-Sebaai, adding that "it is possible for the moment to move Mubarak to the military medical centre" on the Cairo-Ismailia desert road. Mubarak took refuge in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on 13 April after he was summoned for questioning. His two sons Alaa and Gamal were arrested on the same day and taken to Tora Prison near south Cairo's district of Maadi. The reaction to the prosecutor-general's decision on Mubarak remains to be seen. The Tahrir Square protesters who helped depose Mubarak on 11 February and who organised million-man mass rallies on 1 and 8 April to exert pressure on the ruling military to put Mubarak on trial might see the prosecutor-general's announcement about the ousted president's health as a way of absorbing pressure and keeping Mubarak in Sharm El-Sheikh. Several young 25 January activists have strong suspicions that chief of forensic medicine El-Sebaai could be forced to fake a report about Mubarak's health. "He did it before when he forged a report about Khaled Said," said one rebel. Said was the young Alexandrian allegedly killed by two police informers last summer. Said's death resulted in large-scale rallies that helped create the 25 January Revolution. Mubarak was questioned on two serious charges: ordering the killing of pro-democracy protesters in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the country, and helping business tycoon Hussein Salem monopolise the sale of Egypt's natural gas to Israel at extremely cheap prices against hefty commissions. Mubarak was questioned while with his lawyer, Farid El-Deeb, and his wife Suzanne. Questioned as a witness, Mubarak's 13-day vice president and former chief of General Intelligence Omar Suleiman said on 18 April that Mubarak had never issued orders to former interior minister Habib El-Adli to open fire on protesters. "On the contrary," said Suleiman, "Mubarak was very clear in instructing El-Adli and police forces to exercise restraint, and to seek the help of the army in peacefully containing the protesters," said Suleiman. The former vice president rather placed all the blame on El-Adli for the killing of demonstrators on 28 January, the deadliest day of the protests. "Though El-Adli was instructed by Mubarak to exercise restraint and seek the help of the army, he opted to issue orders to security forces to open fire on protesters to protect themselves," Suleiman said. Up to 800 unarmed demonstrators were believed killed by riot police during the height of the protests. The former General Intelligence chief added, "I have strong suspicions that many of the National Democratic Party [NDP] senior officials were implicated in masterminding the attacks on protesters in Tahrir Square on 2 February (popularly known as the Battle of the Camel) but I do not know whether Mubarak had a hand in this battle or not." During his own testimony, Mubarak's son and once heir apparent Gamal vehemently denied that he had ever given orders to El-Adli to open fire on protesters. "I have never been a state official, and never had the authority to give orders to anybody," Gamal reportedly told investigators. The trial of El-Adli and four of his ex-aides began on 26 April but was postponed to 21 May. El-Adli defended the performance of security forces during the demonstrations, emphasising that "they resorted to using tear gas to disperse demonstrators but they were forced to open fire only to defend themselves against armed gangs of organised thugs who torched police stations and offices of the NDP." Mubarak himself told investigators during a very brief question and answer session on 13 April that he never issued orders for El-Adli to open fire on protesters. "El-Adli told me that a lot of Muslim Brotherhood members had infiltrated the Tahrir Square demonstrations, and we had fears that the revolution of the youth would be stolen by radical Islamists, but we never went to the extent of giving orders to kill the protesters," Mubarak reportedly told investigators. All these testimonies were given the lie, however, by a report issued by a fact-finding committee on the bloody events of 28 January and the Battle of the Camel on 2 February. The report, released in a press conference on 19 April, pointed accusing fingers at Mubarak and El-Adli. The report said El-Adli could not issue orders to fire on protesters without the clear consent of Mubarak in his capacity as president of the republic. The report deplored that "neither the president nor the interior minister had ordered any investigation into these bloody incidents, nor did they intervene to bring a stop to the attacks or to hold accountable those who fired live rounds." This, concluded the report, "means that Mubarak and his interior minister should be held accountable either by actual involvement or by complicity." Concerning the 2 February incident, the report shied away from directly accusing Mubarak. It stressed, however, that several senior officials of the defunct NDP participated in masterminding and sponsoring the attacks. Fathi Sorour, the former parliamentary speaker, also held in detention, told prosecutors on 20 April that he had never received orders by phone from Mubarak to send thugs and hooligans from south Cairo's densely-populated Al-Sayeda Zeinab district to attack protesters who used knives, daggers, cudgels and Molotov cocktails. Testimony provided by other former NDP MPs, especially the deputy of Al-Haram (the Pyramids) district, Abdel-Nasser El-Gabri, spoke of high-ranking NDP officials, including Mubarak, his son Gamal and former secretary-general Safwat El-Sherif, masterminded the attacks on protesters on 2 February by camel and horse-back hooligans wielding swords and cudgels. Mubarak was also questioned over natural gas sales to Israel at prices that were allegedly below international market levels. Mubarak is accused of pocketing personal profits from the deal which allowed Israel to buy gas at a discount. Egypt lost at least $714 million over the deal. Mubarak strongly denied having inappropriate contacts with former Israeli minister of national infrastructures Binyamin Ben Eliezer. Mubarak reportedly said that former minister of petroleum Sameh Fahmi and his technical advisors affiliated with the Egyptian General Petroleum Organisation (EGPO) were technically responsible for the deal with Israel. Mubarak reportedly said during the questioning, "the responsible committees submitted a report to me saying that the price Israel was offering was in accordance with world prices." Mubarak's lawyer El-Deeb indicated that "EGPO is exclusively empowered by law [Law 20/1976] to give the final say about gas and oil export deals because this is a purely technical issue." On 21 April, however, Prosecutor-General Abdel-Meguid ordered that Fahmi and five ex- ministry officials be remanded in custody for 15 days pending an investigation into the sale of natural gas to Israel at below market prices. On 20 April, Abdel-Meguid ordered police authorities to ask Interpol to arrest businessman Hussein Salem who is charged with giving Mubarak a hefty commission in return for being given a monopoly of the sale of natural gas to Israel. Israel gets 40 per cent of its natural gas from Egypt under an agreement signed in December 2005. Salem, currently on the run abroad, as well as Israeli, American and Thai investors, own East Mediterranean Gas (EMG), which has a monopoly of the supply of Egyptian natural gas to Israel via a pipeline between Arish, the capital of north Sinai, and the port city of Ashkelon in Israel. It is widely rumoured that Fahmi was formerly a consultant to Salem and was rewarded in 1999 by being appointed minister of petroleum to facilitate the selling of gas to Israel. Fahmi was helped several times by NDP officials to dodge answering questions levelled by opposition MPs during the 2005-2010 People's Assembly on the sale of gas to Israel. Fahmi reportedly said in his interrogation, "the gas deal with Israel was the political responsibility of Mubarak and former prime minister Atef Ebeid." Salem has been branded by the press as Mubarak's "front man" and "the king of Sharm El-Sheikh". Salem told an Egyptian newspaper a few years ago that he got to know Mubarak in the late 1960s and that since then they have had a strong friendship. Several Western and local press reports have revealed evidence that Mubarak and Salem made a vast fortune from commissions gained from transporting American military assistance shipments to Egypt after the peace treaty with Israel was signed in 1979. In 1994, Salem built the Mubarak family three luxurious villas in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh where Mubarak opted to stay after being deposed as president on 11 February. Several judicial experts believe that Mubarak may be executed or jailed for life if convicted of the charges against him. Zakaria Shalash, a legal expert, said Mubarak could face execution if found guilty of ordering the killing of protesters and peddling influence to embezzle public funds.
