An upbeat and alert-looking Hosni Mubarak waved to his supporters after he was wheeled into a Cairo courtroom on Saturday for the first session of his retrial on charges of complicity in the killing of demonstrators during the 2011 revolt that led to his ouster.
The procedural session quickly ended when the judge recused himself, referring the case to an appeals court to choose a replacement.
Mubarak sat upright on a hospital gurney inside a defendants’ cage of iron bars and wire mesh. His two sons Alaa and Gamal and his former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly, currently held in prison for separate cases, were also in the courtroom cage alongside him.
Mubarak is the first Arab president to serve a prison sentence. The 84-year-old ousted Egyptian leader, wearing brown-tinted glasses, had not been seen in public since his initial conviction in June 2012. Unconfirmed reports had emerged several times in the past year suggesting that he was on the brink of death.
He was airlifted by a military helicopter to the court from a Cairo hospital. His two sons and el-Adly were driven from Tora prison.
Judge Mostafa Hassan recused himself on Saturday from the trial, but did not specify the conflict of interest behind this decision.
As he took the bench, some lawyers shouted to demand that he step down from the case. “Sit until you hear what the court’s decision is,” the judge responded.