Sissi sees new future for Egypt after Mubarak acquittal

CAIRO, Egypt — President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi said Egypt will never return to the past and is charting a new future, after a court dismissed murder charges against former leader Hosni Mubarak.

A Cairo court on Saturday dropped the charges over the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended three decades of autocratic Mubarak rule.

Seven of his security commanders, including feared former interior minister Habib al-Adly, were also acquitted over the deaths of some of the roughly 800 people killed during the revolt.

Corruption charges against Mubarak’s sons Alaa and Gamal were also dropped.

In a statement issued late on Sunday, Sissi said “the new Egypt, which emerged from the January 25 and June 30 revolutions, is on a path to establish a modern democratic state based on justice, freedom, equality and a renunciation of corruption.”

“It is on an aspirational path to the future and can never go back to the past.”

Sissi said he had instructed Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab to review the provisions for compensation for the families of “martyrs and those wounded in the revolution.”

After Saturday’s verdict, Sissi said he had also asked the legal reform committee to examine amendments to the code of criminal procedure, as recommended by the court.

During the 2011 uprising, hundreds of thousands of people protested daily, demanding that Mubarak step down. After he resigned they continued to stage demonstrations, insisting that he face trial.

More than 1,000 protesters demonstrating against Saturday’s verdict at an entrance to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the hub of the anti-Mubarak revolt, were dispersed by police firing tear gas.

Dozens of people were also arrested but later freed.

Sissi, who was Mubarak’s intelligence chief, won a landslide victory in a May presidential election after crushing his Islamist and secularist opponents.

As army chief he removed Mubarak’s successor, Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, in July 2013.

Since Morsi’s ouster, a crackdown on his supporters has left at least 1,400 dead and seen more than 15,000 imprisoned.

Dozens have also been sentenced to death after speedy mass trials.