Court orders release of Mubarak’s sons

CAIRO — An Egyptian court ordered the release of the sons of Egypt’s ousted president Hosni Mubarak on Thursday pending retrial in a corruption case, their lawyer said.

Lawyer Farid Al Deeb said the order for the release of Alaa and Gamal Mubarak should mean they immediately walk free. A court had already dropped other graft charges against the sons in November.

The Cairo Criminal Court said in a document explaining its ruling that the two men had already served the maximum permitted time of 18 months in pretrial detention and should therefore not be held pending their retrial in a corruption case.

The retrial was ordered by Egypt’s high court earlier this month.

In May, his sons were given four-year jail terms in the same case, while the 86-year-old former president received a three-year sentence.

They were charged with diverting public funds earmarked to renovate presidential palaces and using the money to upgrade family properties.

It was not immediately clear why the court did not also order Mubarak’s release.

Suffering from ill health, he has been serving his sentence in a military hospital in the upscale Maadi district of Cairo.

Judicial sources have said he could soon walk free as no convictions remain against him after the high court ordered a retrial in the embezzlement case.

In November, a court dropped charges against Mubarak of conspiring to kill protesters in the uprising that ended his 30-year rule.