Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

Former President Mubarak of Egypt was liberated today after six years in hospital-prison and will tonight sleep in his own bed in his villa in the Heliopolis area of Cairo. I'm just down the road, like I was when he assumed the presidency on 6th October 1981, the day Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

Mubarak has been cleared, finally, of all charges of corruption and murder that were brought against him. The trials, convictions, appeals, stays and retrials are beyond easy telling here. I wasn't in the courtroom to hear the evidence presented on each occasion and, even if I had been, as one cannot ever rely on evidence being properly presented in Egyptian courts, I cannot say from direct witnessing if the final outcome of liberation is fair and just. I doubt it.

It tests credulity that a tyrannical, despotic and hard-fisted ruler who kept 'his' country under an emergency law for thirty years that could, and did, see people detained and tortured in perpetuity with no stated reason or trial AND who also oversaw the brutal repression of the 2011 revolution with at last 900 dead in and around Tahrir Square does not have blood on his hands. It's also hard to believe that he did not line a few pockets including his and those of his sons along the way. The latter seems to be an open secret, completely undisputed and evidenced by the pay-back deals being agreed nearly every day with corpulent business men.

The response to Mubarak's release has been muted. Not surprising if you cannot freely protest your feelings in the street without the risk of detention without trial for years. It's worth noting that many revolutionaries from the same period are still behind bars - all they fought for was bread, democracy and social justice.

No one really knows if the sun is going down on the hopes of the revolution - in the short term, many would say yes. Others have a more hopeful long term view that says that the seeds of freedom exist and, although they have been scattered by the wind, will germinate one day.

Let's hope and pray that another wonderful sun full of possibilities will rise here in Egypt in the near future and that the bars behind which Mubarak put his people for years and which still exist for them will tumble for good, just as they have for him. Fair's fair, no?