There was no surprise in the verdict issued by the Egyptian Court of Cassation yesterday, which granted the appeal of former President Hosni Mubarak and his Interior Minister Habib El-Adly against the life sentence they were issued by the Criminal Court, as well as the appeal of the Public Prosecution against the verdict of innocence for Mubarak's sons, Alaa and Gamal, and Adly's six aides. Indeed, in major cases such as these, the Court of Cassation usually considers it necessary to grant the accused a retrial in order to ascertain that the verdict was not affected by pressures or by the political circumstances surrounding the case. What matters is that the retrial of all those accused in the case, despite the apparent controversy surrounding it, has brought relief to all parties concerned. Indeed, Mubarak supporters and “fans" of the former regime considered the verdict of the Court of Cassation to have restored the dignity of the toppled President and his Interior Minister, and continue to hope that both will be declared innocent upon retrial. As for those who hate Mubarak, from among the revolutionaries, Islamists and enemies of the old regime, they believe that there is a chance for the death sentence to be issued against Mubarak and Adly upon retrial, as well as for the former's sons, Alaa and Gamal, and the latter's six aides to be convicted. The ruling institution, for its part, had formed a fact-finding commission which has finally completed its work and drawn up a report that it presented to President Mohamed Morsi before handing it in to the Public Prosecution – a report which has been said to include new information about the killing of protesters during the Revolution. The verdict of the Court of Cassation has thus spared it some embarrassment in the issue of the retrial of those accused in the case without a judicial decision, with what this would have represented in terms of suspicions of interfering with the work of the judiciary – especially as the crisis between those in power and the judiciary on the background of the Constitutional Declaration is still having repercussions, in addition to the fact that the problem concerning the Public Prosecutor and objections against him has still not been resolved. Under Egyptian law, those accused in the case still retain another opportunity to resort to the Court of Cassation if they are convicted upon retrial, as they can appeal to it again to overturn guilty verdicts. And if the Court of Cassation were to grant them appeal after their second trial, it would then take it upon itself to look into the case, without referring it to one of the divisions of the Criminal Court – knowing that Mubarak and Adly cannot have their sentence raised to a death sentence, as per the legal rule that states that “those who appeal cannot be harmed by their own appeal". Indeed, it was the two accused who appealed against the life sentence, while the Public Prosecution did not appeal against it but only against the sentence clearing Alaa and Gamal Mubarak as well as the other six. In any case, Egyptian politics will continue to be discussed in courtrooms for quite some time. And even if the judges are not supposed to be affected by political conflicts, those party to the political game in the country, and there are so many of them, have grown accustomed to making use of all such cases in the “service" of their interests or stances. Yet the verdict that brings Mubarak back to the forefront of events once again could affect the political equation that has become established over the past weeks and months and has resulted in the presence of those in power and the Islamist on one side, and of revolutionary forces, and with them the enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood in particular and of Islamists in general, on the other. Indeed, it is no secret that a state of unification has brought together those opposed to the rule of the Islamists, for many reasons, among them the behavior of the Muslim Brotherhood, its tendencies, its methods of rule and the mistakes it has committed, in addition of course to the realization by opposition forces across the spectrum that confronting the Islamists, for example in the next parliamentary elections, would necessarily require competing against them through a single list that would bring together the Left and the Right, as well as those affiliated with the former regime, as long as they have not been implicated in cases of corruption. No secret either is the fact that prominent figures of the National Salvation Front have for some time sought to absorb the anger of some of the “revolutionaries", who always expect them to take stern, sharp or escalatory stances in confronting President Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists in general. At the same time, such “revolutionaries" object to the presence of personalities associated with the former regime within the framework of the Salvation Front. Thus the Front suffers not only from ideological disagreements among its constituents, but also from the zeal of some of its revolutionary elements, who do not accept calm stances at times, or reject settling for the de facto situation at others, on the part of prominent figures of the Salvation Front. The coming weeks will be likely to witness further repercussions on the political scene in general. Yet the greatest threat to be faced by opposition forces in general and by the National Salvation Front in particular will be the impact of Mubarak and Adly's sentences being overturned and their retrial with the rest of those accused in the case on their solidarity. Indeed, if the Front were to collapse, then the verdict of the Court of Cassation would devastate them.
