CAIRO - Only a week now, Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak will have to stand trial for corruption and ordering the killing of anti-government protesters during the 18-day revolution that deposed him. Hardly does a day pass without news about the trial and state of health of the country's once strongman, who ruled for three decades. The question of the location for trying the 83-year-old toppled leader has raised controversy. He could be tried in Sharm el-Sheikh, where he is hospitalised, or be taken to Cairo to stand trial in the capital. But many think that the Red Sea resort is the more likely choice, maybe for security reasons. The issue became more controversial earlier this week when a Cairo court decided that former interior minister Habib Al Adli and six of his aides would be tried alongside Mubarak for ordering the murder of protesters. Adli's case has been merged with Mubarak's. Only Wednesday, the head of the Cairo Appeal Court, el-Sayed Abdel-Aziz Omar, said no decision has yet been made on the location of the trial and that it will be announced in the coming few days either in Sharm or in Cairo, according to MENA. Egyptians should not ask about the location of the trial, said Judge Ahmed Refaat, head of the criminal court, who will preside over the trial. “Egyptians should calm down since the trial will be fair and I won't talk to the media. They have to wait and follow the trial,” Refaat told a talk show programme on el-Hayat 2, an independent TV channel late on Tuesday, in his first statements to the media. A report that Mubarak had died was quashed by the official MENA news agency on Tuesday, which said that the old man “is weak and refuses solid food”. Mubarak's state of health has been a frequent subject for speculation. Many Egyptians see his illness as a ploy to avoid being tried. Mubarak "totally refuses to eat food but drinks juice and some other liquids. He has lost a lot of weight. He is weak and frail," Mohamed Fathallah, the head of the hospital where Mubarak is being treated, has been quoted as saying. Meanwhile, Counsellor Hesham Genina, a judge in the Cairo Court of Appeal, has warned of “insufficient evidence” in Mubarak's case. “I am afraid that the evidence offered by investigators might be insufficient,” Genina told a conference, entitled ‘Challenges of the Transitional Phase' in Egypt, hosted by the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, late on Tuesday. He stressed the need for the testimony of the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, and the commander of Mubarak's elite Republican Guard. Both have information about Mubarak trying to abort the January 25 revolution, he said. Tantawi was Mubarak's Defence Minister for more than two decades. In April a government fact-finding mission announced that at least 846 Egyptians died in the 18-day revolt, that ended Mubarak's 30-year rule. In a report, the panel of judges described police forces shooting protesters in the head and chest with live ammunition and presented a death toll more than twice that of previous official estimates. More than 6,000 were injured. Genina also called for trying former Minister of Justice Mamdouh Marei for taking part in the ‘political corruption' of the Mubarak regime.
