CAIRO — An Egyptian prosecutor on Monday ordered that former president Hosni Mubarak be freed from the Cairo military hospital where he has spent much of the past six years.
News of Mubarak’s impending release first came through his longtime lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, who said in a TV interview that Mubarak, 88, was likely to return home Tuesday or Wednesday.
Hours later, the state media confirmed that the prosecutor, Ibrahim Saleh, had ordered Mubarak’s release from the Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo.
Mubarak led Egypt for 30 years until he was toppled in 2011. His release has been possible since Egypt’s top appeals court cleared him in the last criminal prosecution he faced in early March.
Even before that, many Egyptians considered his detention at the hospital to be a political as much as a legal matter.
Still, the prospect of release of one of the Arab world’s former strongman leaders, a longtime US ally accused of corruption and cronyism, is a landmark in Egyptian history and in some respects underscores how little has changed since the tumultuous days of his removal in February 2011, when millions of young Egyptians jammed the streets clamoring for a radical new direction.
While the prosecutor’s decision was not surprising, it was undoubtedly awkward for Egypt’s current leader, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who sometimes praises the revolution.
Mubarak’s decision to cede power had ripple effects throughout the Arab world and preceded the overthrow of longtime dictators in Libya and Yemen.
But the promise of the Arab Spring soon dissipated as Libya and Yemen plunged into chaos, Syria descended into civil war and the Islamic State feasted on the resulting chaos to pursue its vision of jihadi Armageddon.
The first competitive, democratic presidential election in Egypt’s history brought Mohammed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to power in June 2012. But just 12 months later he was toppled by military officers, who replaced him with a general, Sissi, who later left the military to become a civilian president.
Since then, Egypt’s courts have jailed tens of thousands of Brotherhood members, opposition activists, lawyers, journalists, and other critics of Sissi.
The political prisoners include many of the same people who helped topple Mubarak — a paradox that will not be lost on many Egyptians should Mubarak be released in the coming days.
Mubarak was acquitted by the country’s top appeals court of charges that he ordered the killing of protesters during the 2011 revolution. That verdict, according to Saleh, cleared the way for Mubarak’s lawyer to request his release.
Mubarak, according to Saleh, has already served a three-year sentence for embezzling state funds while in detention in connection with the protesters’ case.
A criminal court ruled in May 2015 to jail Mubarak for three years and fine him millions of Egyptian pounds after his conviction for embezzling funds earmarked for the maintenance and renovation of presidential palaces. The ruling was upheld by another court in January 2016.
‘‘There is not a single reason to keep him in detention and the police must execute the order,’’ Saleh said.
Activists say Mubarak’s acquittal on charged of killing protesters has confirmed long-held suspicions that his trial and that of scores of police officers who faced trial on the same charge would never bring the justice they demanded.
