Mubarak detention extended as tourism minister is jailed

Egypt’s state prosecutor yesterday renewed the detention of ousted president Hosni Mubarak amid a probe into corruption and the killing of protesters, as the former tourism minister was jailed for fraud.

Abdel Maguid Mahmud “has ordered the preventive detention of former president Hosni Mubarak for 15 days that will begin when his current detention ends” on May 12, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The decision came after a team of investigators questioned Mr Mubarak again in a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he is being held.

It is the second time Mr Mubarak’s detention has been extended.

The decision comes three months after Mr Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising that saw power handed over to a military council.

The trial of former regime members, including President Mubarak, was a key demand of the protesters.

Sources at the public prosecutor’s office told AFP that a decision on whether or not to put Mr Mubarak on trial would be announced in the coming days.

Meanwhile, former tourism minister Zuheir Garranah was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of corruption.

Mr Garranah, who was sentenced along with two businessmen, was charged with misuse of public funds totalling $51 million, after authorising the sale of state-owned land for well below the market price.

He is the second Mubarak-era minister to be jailed for corruption, as part of a sweeping probe into corruption by the country’s new military rulers.

Mr Garranah was convicted of ordering the sale of 305 million square metres of land – some of it oil-bearing – to businessmen Hisham al-Hazeq and Hussein Segwani for one dollar per square metre for tourism projects. He was detained on February 17, less than a week after a popular uprising forced President Mubarak to step down and hand power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

On Thursday, a court sentenced once-feared Egyptian interior minister Habib al-Adly to 12 years for corruption.

Mr Adly, who ran Mr Mubarak’s security services for more than a decade before the strongman’s overthrow in the face of 18 days of mass protests, was convicted of money laundering and illicitly enriching himself while in office.

He faces a second trial on charges of ordering police to shoot protesters, and a third alongside the former premier and finance minister over a deal with a German firm to supply Egypt with licence plates at allegedly inflated prices.

Mr Mubarak is currently under arrest in a hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, while the military mulls moving him to a prison hospital in Cairo.