(Reuters) – In rare testimony to a Cairo court, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denied on Wednesday that he ordered the killing of protesters in a 2011 uprising, saying history would vindicate him.
Mubarak, 86, was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for complicity in the deaths of demonstrators and the breakdown of law and order during the 18-day revolt that ended his 30-year presidency, but an appeals court subsequently ordered a retrial.
He was freed on those charges, but is serving a separate three-year sentence for embezzlement at a military hospital in the upscale Maadi district of Cairo.
Many Egyptians who lived through his autocracy and crony capitalism considered it a victory to see Mubarak behind bars.
But since the ouster of elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi last year by then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, some Mubarak-era figures have been freed, raising concern among activists that the old regime was regaining influence.
The political demise of Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood at the hands of the military means voices more sympathetic to the former airforce officer are now being heard.
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