Egypt's Mubarak gets three-year sentence

An Egyptian court has sentenced ousted President Hosni Mubarak to three years for corruption.

His sons, Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, were sentenced to four years in jail on charges of stealing public funds.

They were accused of embezzling more than one hundred million Egyptian pounds (about $14 million, 10 million euros) earmarked for the maintenance of presidential palaces.

Mubarak, 86, wearing a grey suit, sat on a wheelchair in the caged dock for the verdict. His sons, in white prison issue clothing, stood beside him.

Mubarak had technically been a free man after a court ordered his release last year following the end of the permitted detention period, but has since remained out of sight in a military hospital.

He is now likely to be returned to prison.

"The owners of public property are the people," said judge Osama Shaheen before reading out the verdict.

"He should have treated people close and far from him equally," said Shaheen, as quoted by Reuters.

"Instead of abiding by the constitution and laws, he gave himself and his sons the freedom to take from public funds whatever they wanted to without oversight and without regard."

Mostafa Ali As, one of Mubarak's lawyers, told Agence France-Presse after that they will appeal the ruling.

Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 over the killings of protesters during the 18-day uprising that ended his three-decade rule.

A court overturned that verdict on technical grounds, and he is now being retried along with seven police commanders.

He also faces corruption charges in that trial, along with his sons and a businessman who fled the country.

Mubarak's trial was a key demand of protesters in the months after his overthrow, prompting the then ruling military to arrest him in a resort villa and move him to a Cairo prison.

(with AFP and Reuters)