The retrial ordered for Hosni Mubarak by Egypt's court has caused widespread dismay. Essentially the appeal court judges decided that there were grounds to question the ousted president's conviction for being responsible for the deaths of over 800 protesters during Egypt's Arab Spring in January 2011. It was always going to be difficult to make the charges stick. No matter that Mubarak and his clique ruled Egypt with a rod of iron, ultimately there needed to be clear evidence that Mubarak told his police force to open fire - a smoking gun in the form of emails or voice recordings in which he actually gave the order to shoot. His lawyers were able to argue for a retrial on the basis that this evidence was not strong enough to convict. Mubarak has already been acquitted on charges of corruption. Yet that is not what really matters to most Egyptians. Their real anger stems from the ruthlessness with which the military-backed regime sought to crush the revolution. People were long resigned to the financial dishonesty and cronyism of their leaders. It was the open bloodshed along with the continuing covert police torture and murder of detainees that sparked their ire. Few Egyptians were moved by the sight of the fallen president being wheeled into court on a stretcher. They wanted revenge for the savagery of the police and regime supporters. Now they fear that in this key area, the 84-year-old Mubarak may escape justice. Much of course depends on the result of the retrial. If the old man's conviction is upheld, then many will breathe a sigh of relief. Life imprisonment would probably suffice to cool public anger and make people feel that justice had at last been done. However, if Mubarak is eventually found not guilty, then, as one commentator put it last week, many will ask themselves if the revolution has in fact changed anything. There will be an overwhelming suspicion that the judiciary is still in the hands of the military as it stands back in the shadows waiting for Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi to fail, for public disorder to break out and for an excuse to relaunch itself into power in the name of Egypt's security. Even if the judges behave with scrupulousness with regard to the facts, a scrupulousness that they have not always displayed in the past, there will still be considerable doubt about their independence. This would, however, be a tragedy. A stable and prosperous Egypt depends on the emergence of institutions that can be relied upon to behave impartially. This is as true of the judiciary as it is of the lowest government functionary with his tiny portion of power, exercised when it comes to issuing the ubiquitous permission chits essential for so many areas of national life and rarely obtained without the payment of baksheesh. Egypt needs to clean up its public life from top to bottom. The Muslim Brotherhood, emulating Turkey's moderate Islamic government, has the chance to begin this cleansing. But Morsi is already surrounded with other daunting challenges, not simply the skewed economy and collapsed tourism revenues, but also a rising tide of seemingly orchestrated public unrest. The acquittal of Mubarak at his retrial could infuriate everyone, including members of Morsi's own party, who took part in the revolution which they thought would change everything.
