Egypt acquits former Mubarak minister of corruption

An Egyptian court acquitted former Hosni Mubarak interior minister Habib Al-Adly of corruption Thursday in a retrial after he had been sentenced to 12 years in 2011.

A cassation court had ordered the retrial of Adly, who had been convicted of money-laundering and illicitly enriching himself.

The charges were linked to the sale of land owned by Adly. He tasked police officials with finding a buyer who would pay the highest possible price.

The disgraced ex-minister, who ran Mubarak's security services for more than a decade before a popular uprising overthrew the strongman in 2011, will remain in detention.

In February, a court upheld a three-year jail sentence handed to Adly for taking advantage of his position and forcing police conscripts to work on his private property.

Along with Mubarak, he had been sentenced to life in prison in 2012 over the killings of protesters in the 2011 uprising. A court overturned the verdict on technical grounds and they are now being retried along with six police commanders.

Mubarak himself was sentenced in May to three years in prison on corruption charges, while his two sons Alaa and Gamal each received four-year terms.

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.

Recently, however, the trials of Mubarak and officials from his government have been overshadowed by the charges against Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, ousted in July by ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the country's new president.