86-year-old Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for three decades before mass protests drove him from office in 2011, was sentenced today to three years in prison for embezzlement. From Reuters:
Mubarak spent 23 months in jail from the uprising until August 2013, when he was transferred to house arrest. It was not immediately clear how much of that time served would be applied against Wednesday’s sentence, but judicial sources told Reuters that they did not expect Mubarak to serve the entire three years as punishment for the corruption charges.
A former Mubarak ally is expected to win a national election next week to become president of the military-supported regime that supplanted a government led by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood last year. The Brotherhood and its supporters have since been subject to large crackdowns; Reuters notes that “many prominent activists have recently been given harsher sentences for street protests than Mubarak received for embezzling millions while serving as president.”
Mubarak is also awaiting retrial on charges of involvement in the deaths of some of the protestors who helped topple his presidency.
