Mubarak to apologize to Egyptians and plead for amnesty, as prosecution imminent
Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is to apologize to the nation and plead for amnesty, three months after he was overthrown by a popular uprising, according to a report in the independent daily al-Shorouk.
The report appears in Tuesday’s edition and quotes Egyptian and Arab official sources as saying that Mr. Mubarak was “drafting a letter which will be broadcast on Egyptian and Arabic channels, apologizing on behalf of himself and his family for any offence caused to the people.”
He is also to apologize “for any behavior which may have stemmed from false information passed on to him by his advisers.”
The former president and his wife Suzanne are under arrest in a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after both of them suffered heart attacks during interrogation as part of a graft probe.
Mr. Mubarak is also ready to hand over his assets to the state in a bid to have the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces “look into an amnesty,” the paper said.
A military source told Al-Shorouk that several Egyptian and Arab parties had been requesting an amnesty for Mr. Mubarak, 83, “within an acceptable legal framework.”
The amnesty would apply to Mr. Mubarak, his wife Suzanne, and their two sons Alaa and Gamal who are held in Cairo’s Tora prison on corruption charges, but sources say it is unlikely to be granted to the sons, the paper said.
I bet the countless number of people who were brutally tortured, falsely imprisoned, repressed, who ‘disappeared’, and who were outright murdered over his 30 year reign of self-interest and oppression - I bet they wish they’d have been given the option of an ‘amnesty’ at his tyrant hands.
If there’s any justice in post-revolutionary Egypt, he’ll rightly be tried and convicted of, to name just a few, corruption, widespread abuse of power, war crimes and (though let’s face it unlikely) for treason against his nation; in his torture apparatus, in his collaboration with the US and Israel in occupation, and in his plundering of the nation’s resources against the interests of his own people.