Whether or not ousted former president Hosni Mubarak remains in hospital, officials have been stressing that he will be tried and if convicted could face the death penalty, reports Gamal Essam El-Din During a five-day tour of three Gulf countries last week, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf vowed that deposed former president Hosni Mubarak, currently in hospital in Sharm El-Sheikh, will face trial on charges of corruption and ordering the killing of unarmed demonstrators. At the end of a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Sharaf stressed that no Gulf state had exerted pressure on the Egyptian government to exempt Mubarak from prosecution, saying that "we do not accept any pressure from any state, and this is a purely Egyptian matter." "No one in Egypt is above the law," Sharaf said, defending the idea of prosecuting former president Mubarak on the grounds that "we have started on a one-way path to democracy. We are trying to take the first step towards the rule of law, and no one is above the law, whoever they are." Joining forces with Sharaf, Minister of Justice Mohamed Abdel-Aziz El-Guindi also stressed on 30 April that Mubarak would face trial even if hearings had to be held at the Sharm El-Sheikh hospital. In a press statement, El-Guindi emphasised that "Mubarak faces serious accusations ranging from accumulating a vast fortune from corrupt arms deals and natural gas sales to ordering the killing of protesters." El-Guindi added that an ad hoc judicial investigation had discovered that the Mubarak family was in possession of considerable wealth inside and outside Egypt. "The Mubarak family has huge bank accounts in Egypt," El-Guindi said, adding that "we are in the process of sending judicial delegations abroad to negotiate with a number of countries in a bid to recover the wealth of the Mubarak family there as well." Although El-Guindi did not elaborate on Mubarak's alleged arms deals, reports indicate that the former president and business tycoon Hussein Salem were allegedly involved in the lucrative business of facilitating US military assistance to Egypt and had been doing so since the early 1980s. When he was still vice-president, Mubarak helped Salem set up a company by the name of EATSCO, the Egyptian-American Transport and Services Company, with a CIA partner in order to monopolise the transport of US military shipments to Egypt against hefty commissions. Several US publications agree that many former Egyptian officials were also involved in these deals, including former Field Marshal Mohamed Abdel-Halim Abu- Ghazala, military attaché at the Egyptian embassy in the US throughout the second half of the 1970s, and Mounir Thabet, Mubarak's brother-in-law and chief of military procurement operations at that time. El-Guindi said that much of Mubarak's wealth came from sales of natural gas to Israel through the East Mediterranean Gas Company owned by Salem. In a speech on the Saudi-owned satellite channel Al-Arabiya on 10 April, Mubarak denied that he was in possession of any assets or bank deposits in Europe or America. This claim was contradicted by El-Guindi, who said that "Mubarak made corruption the cornerstone of his regime, and he accumulated a vast fortune outside Egypt." Mubarak's personal fortune is estimated in some foreign circles as being worth some $70 billion, with that of his associates amounting to a further $200 billion. However, these figures have been refuted by the US Forbes magazine, which wrote that they "would make Mubarak the second richest person in the world, way ahead of the computer billionaire Bill Gates. It would make him richer than the King of Thailand, Sultan of Brunei and King of Saudi Arabia combined." Forbes dismissed another report, this time made by The Washington Post, which alleged that it had "been privy to documents published by top Egyptian lawyers claiming that the former president's clan may have squirreled away $700 billion in cash, gold and other state-owned valuables." Thiss $700 billion haul was said to include "75 tons of Egyptian gold held by the US Federal Reserve." On 2 May, the Swiss government unveiled that Mubarak holds banking deposits at Switzerland estimated at 410 million francs. Assem Al-Gohary, chairman of the Ministry of Justice's Ilicit Gains Office said "the 410 million francs belong not just to Mubarak, but also to members of his family and 15 former senior officials of his regime." Al-Gohary said "we decided to seek the help of a Swiss law office to recover this money." El-Guindi said Mubarak could face the death penalty if convicted on some of the charges against him, which include complicity to murder after he allegedly ordered the security forces to kill protesters during protests in January and February. "If convicted of the crime of killing protesters, this could result in the death penalty," El-Guindi said. Mubarak would be investigated while he was at the Sharm El-Sheikh hospital, and he would be tried even if he continued to stay in hospital, El-Guindi said, adding that the only person able to pardon Mubarak were he to be convicted would be the country's next president. "If I were the president, I would not pardon him for killing 800 martyrs," El-Guindi said. A fact-finding committee has said that at least 864 people died during the protests that led to Mubarak's ouster in February. Mubarak should be tried before a civilian court rather a military tribunal, El-Guindi said, explaining that this was necessary "in order to guarantee that foreign countries help us recover his wealth." Mubarak's two sons, Alaa and Gamal, and his wife Suzanne also face charges of corruption and the embezzlement of public funds. According to recent reports, Mubarak will be staying at the Sharm El-Sheikh hospital for a while, though Minister of Interior Mansour El-Eissawi visited the Tora prison hospital south of Cairo last week to look into the possibility of moving Mubarak there. The Tora prison hospital was in need of intensive care facilities, El-Eissawi said in his report, explaining that "I cannot bear the responsibility of transporting Mubarak while he is sick and if anything happened to him while he was there." Meanwhile, statements made by medical chief Ahmed El-Sebaai about Mubarak's health have elicited nervous reactions from political forces, especially the 25 January Revolution Youth Coalition. According to El-Sebaai, "Mubarak suffers from heart palpitations, and it would be hazardous for his health to be moved to another hospital." Other doctors have attacked El-Sebaai, insisting that it is not dangerous for persons suffering from heart palpitations to be moved. Gamal Shaaban, chair of the critical conditions unit at the Cairo Heart Institute, said that "Mubarak should be examined by medical doctors, rather than by forensic doctors, for a final say about his health condition." Several young political activists, including the chair of the Ghad Party Ayman Nour, have attacked El-Sebaai, claiming that "he was appointed head of forensic medicine by the former State Security apparatus in order to fabricate reports about people tortured to death." The activists have accused El-Sebaai of fabricating a report on the death of Khaled Said, a young Alexandrian man widely believed to have been tortured to death by security agents in January 2010, whose death was put down to "swallowing drugs" in El-Sebaai's official report. The director of the Sharm El-Sheikh hospital said that Mubarak is currently in a depressed state and does not have any appetite. "He eats very small meals and does not want to see anybody except his family and grandchildren," the director said.
