Doaa El-Bey and Rasha Saad share reaction to the trial of Hosni Mubarak In the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat, Mshari Al-Zaidi described the event as "historic in every sense of the word". According to Al-Zaidi, one of the most revealing moments of the first session of this trial was Mubarak's silence and seeming inattention to the trial's proceedings. Pondering into the multiple meanings of this attitude, Al-Zaidi wrote that this gives the impression that Mubarak was largely indifferent and apathetic to the entire trial. "It was as if he had plugged his ears and closed his eyes to the bedlam that was taking place around him in the courtroom and was trying to promote the idea that he is a man who is bravely and stoically facing a tragic plight." Al-Zaidi also wrote that this could perhaps stem from his belief that the issue has gone beyond the stage where he can defend himself in words. "Perhaps he [Mubarak] believes that he had already been judged guilty even before the trial began, and that he was sentenced to death the second he entered the dock," Al-Zaidi argued. Al-Zaidi also did not dismiss the possibility that Mubarak "has completely lost his senses in light of everything that is happening around him." Also in Asharq Al-Awsat, Abdel-Rahman Al-Rashid pointed out that those who saw the trial of Mubarak have split into two groups. In 'For or against Mubarak' Al-Rashid explained that one of these groups felt a sense of pride and triumph while the other sorrow and defeat. The happy ones believe the trial is an enforcement of justice and a route for legitimacy and stress that it is a revolution against tyranny and corruption. The unhappy view the trial as the victorious party's revenge and a political ploy in which the ruling parties today are taking part so as to search for legitimacy for themselves. According to Al-Rashid both sides' opinion are reasonable. But for Al-Rashid, the trial should lay the foundation for justice and prudent governance based on law, and not turned into a political circus. "I am absolutely certain that we will hear in future a lot of blame for and disavowal of what is happening today being exchanged unless the victors use today the road of accountability to record stands and not for exacting revenge with jail and execution," Al-Rashid wrote. Tariq Al-Homayed, also in Asharq Al-Awsat, wrote that the scene of Mubarak and his sons brought to court, with the former president being wheeled into the dock in his sickbed "does not point to justice so much as a desire for revenge and retribution against a former president who stepped down from power in the face of popular pressure." Al-Homayed said the revolutionaries did not triumph over Mubarak by forcing him to flee the country or hide in a cave or indeed a hole in the ground, like Saddam Hussein. Nor was Hosni Mubarak like Bashar Al-Assad, who is openly killing his own people today, or like Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who has become a specialist in murdering his own citizens. "Mubarak was wheeled into court in his [hospital] bed after he stepped down from power voluntarily." Al-Homayed explains that if anyone wants to claim otherwise, ie that Mubarak was forced to step down by the military, "then this means that what happened in Egypt was not a revolution, but rather a coup d'état." In the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Ghassan Charbel wrote that Mubarak now has no future and the question should thus be about the future of Egypt, not his. In 'The dock of history' Charbel pointed out that "the trial is valuable in as much as it avoids in the future the calamities of the past, and returns Egypt to its role, so that it becomes a pioneer and a model that rejects injustice and does not surrender to darkness." Charbel also describes the picture of Mubarak in a cage as "a scene from a historical drama in Egypt". He also wrote that being a rare spectacle in the Arab world, "Arabs are monitoring the goings-on of the Egyptian test." "Between the scene of Saddam Hussein coming out of the hole and that of Mubarak on his bed in court, there are chapters of futility exerted by presidents/emperors who assassinated dozens of years in the history of the Arabs," Charbel wrote. Also in Al-Hayat, Jihad Al-Khazen wrote: "I insist that Mubarak steered his country clear of military adventures, that he defeated domestic terrorism in the nineties, and that he did not fail to support Kuwait in its ordeal. His abilities then declined following his first surgery in Germany in 2005. For this reason, I ask the readers to judge all 30 years of his tenure, and not just the last six years. "President Mubarak did his best for the cause of peace in the 1990s. He supported and helped Yasser Arafat in every way available to him, as he believed that Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin were capable of achieving peace. However, the assassination of Rabin brought Binyamin Netanyahu to power. Hosni Mubarak believed from the beginning that Netanyahu is bad news and a charlatan who is opposed to peace, and maintained this opinion as Netanyahu returned as prime minister."
