Former Egyptian President Mubarak to be released - lawyer

Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown as president of Egypt in an uprising in 2011, will be released from detention in a military hospital, the public prosecutor ruled on Monday, his lawyers and judicial sources said.

“He will go to his home in Heliopolis,” Mubarak’s lawyer Farid El Deeb told Reuters. Asked if Mubarak would go home on Monday, he said: “No but tomorrow or after tomorrow.”

Mubarak, 88, was originally sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for conspiring to murder demonstrators, sowing chaos and creating a security vacuum during an 18-day revolt which began in Jan. 2011, but an appeals court ordered a retrial.

The former long time Egyptian ruler has long maintained his innocence in the case and has said history would judge him a patriot who served his country selflessly.

Hundreds of people were killed when security forces clashed with protesters in the weeks before Mubarak was forced from power.

His overthrow led to an election which brought in Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, before a mass uprising toppled him in 2013.

Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, later went on to win a presidential election in 2014.