CAIRO, June 5, (Agencies): Ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak suffered an “emotional breakdown” in prison on Tuesday, days after he was sentenced to life over the death of protesters last year, a senior interior ministry official said.
The ailing 84-year-old’s “health deteriorated while in prison,” the official told AFP without describing the nature of the breakdown.
“Doctors from the police hospital have been called to treat him, along with the prison doctors after he suffered an emotional breakdown” a security official said.
The former leader’s lawyer, Yasser Bahr, confirmed to AFP that Mubarak “had an emotional crisis that affected his general health.”
Mubarak’s son, Gamal, who is in the same prison compound, has been moved to be closer to his father, the security official added.
On Saturday, Mubarak and his interior minister Habib al-Adly were sentenced to life in prison over the killing of protesters during last year’s uprising that ousted him and that left some 850 people dead.
Until the ruling, Mubarak had been held at a military hospital on the outskirts of Cairo, and according to media reports was enjoying comfortable surroundings.
Once flown to Tora prison on Cairo’s outskirts on Saturday, a tearful Mubarak refused to leave the helicopter and security officials said he “suffered from a surprise health crisis” before they finally convinced him to go in.
He reportedly has a heart condition, but the health ministry has denied his lawyer’s assertion that he has cancer.
Meanwhile, crowds of Egyptians flocked to Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square on Tuesday for a mass demonstration to protest against verdicts handed down in Mubarak’s murder trial.
Marchers prepared to leave from several mosques around the capital led by the runners-up in last months’s presidential election first round — Hamdeen Sabbahi, Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh and Khaled Ali— to join thousands already in the square.
In Tahrir, demonstrators chanted against the ruling military council and vowed to keep their revolution alive.
“Revolutionaries, free, we will continue our journey,” they chanted.
“We reject the trial. It’s a big farce,” said Hisham Khalifa, 30, in Tahrir Square.
He said demonstrators also wanted the dismissal of the prosecutor general “who has ignored many corruption cases.”
Demonstrators also want the implementation of a law that would see senior Mubarak-era figures barred from standing for public office.
The legislation could have serious implications for Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister, who is due to face the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi in a presidential election runoff next week.
Tuesday’s protest was called by youth groups which were a driving force behind the uprising against Mubarak’s regime last year, including the Coalition of Revolution Youth and the Maspero Youth Union. It also received the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The runners-up in the first round of the presidential election, leftist politician Sabbahi and moderate Islamist Abul Fotouh, were to lead separate marches to Tahrir Square.
They came third and fourth respectively in the May 23-24 first round.
“We believe that our revolution is not over. The military must leave power and hand it to civilians,” said Mahmud Bahira, a protester from the Revolution Youth movement.
Another protester Mohammed Shabik said: “The judgement in the Mubarak case is not tough enough, there are even people who have been acquitted.”
Egypt’s prosecutor has said that the verdicts will be appealed, but a judicial source said that the process would take several weeks.
Mubarak’s defence team has also said it will challenge the verdict and told AFP it was confident of winning on appeal.
The verdicts come just two weeks before the presidential election runoff which is becoming highly polarised with many activists facing a difficult choice.
For activists, choosing Shafiq, a Mubarak-era figure, would symbolise a return to the old regime and an end to the revolution, but voting for Mursi would mean handing Egypt to a movement they say has monopolised power since the uprising.
Unimaginable 16 months ago, Mubarak’s detention at Tora is a historic moment for both Egypt and the region, even though it has been partly eclipsed by controversy over the verdict. Ayman Nour, a politician held at the same jail for four years by the Mubarak administration, said “God’s justice” had been served.
Reflecting a popular, bordering on morbid fascination with Mubarak’s fate, Egypt’s best-selling newspapers are brimming with reports detailing the former leader’s first days in the prison’s hospital wing.
Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne, visited him on Monday, accompanied by the wives of his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, both of whom have been detained since investigations into separate corruption allegations against them got under way last year. Mubarak had been held at a military hospital during his trial.
“They brought me here to kill me,” Mubarak told Suzanne, according to the front page of Al Masry Al Youm, quoting unnamed sources. “In Tora, Suzanne screams: Don’t forget Mubarak is a hero of the October war,” declared Al-Youm Al-Sabie, another daily, also citing an anonymous source and referring to the 1973 war against Israel.
“The media are competing for who has the juiciest story on what happened to Mubarak,” said Hisham Kassem, a publisher and political commentator. “The competition between the media is over that, not over the implications of it,” he said.
The Egyptians who took to the streets against Mubarak fear he could himself get off at appeal.
Yet Mubarak’s imprisonment, many say, has already sent a powerful message to whoever replaces him as president.
“This is the first time that a pharaoh goes to jail at the hands of his own people,” said Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an academic and activist who was jailed in the Mubarak era.
“It is divine justice, having been pursued, committed to the same prison 12 years ago by the man who was determined to destroy me,” Ibrahim told Reuters.
Ibrahim spent three years in Tora, sentenced on trumped-up charges he says were the result of a vendetta touched off by an article he wrote asserting that Mubarak was readying Gamal to succeed him. Ibrahim was one of the first to speak out about what became known as a plan for the “inheritance power”.
Tora had been a destination for the full spectrum of political dissidents during Mubarak’s 30 years in office. Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, an independent Islamist who mounted a strong bid for the deposed president’s job, was once held there.
Built on Cairo’s southern outskirts, the prison is hidden from sight by an imposing wall. Military helicopters were buzzing over the facility on Monday.
“There are flaws in the verdict, but Mubarak going to prison remains a historic moment in the history of this nation,” said Nour, who went to jail on inflated forgery charges after he ran against Mubarak in a 2005 presidential election.
“I don’t feel joy but I feel that God’s justice has been realised, though justice in Egypt has yet to fully be achieved.”