CAIRO
An Egyptian court on Tuesday ordered the retrial of ousted president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons after accepting their appeal against jail sentences they received last year for corruption, judicial sources have said.
Egypt's Court of Cassation – the country's highest appellate court – accepted the appeal lodged by Mubarak's lawyers and will assign judges to preside over the retrial, the sources told The Anadolu Agency.
Mubarak was sentenced to three years in jail while his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, were each slapped with four-year jail terms after being found guilty of embezzling public funds allocated for the maintenance of presidential palaces and forging official documents.
The public funds were instead used to build, upgrade and furnish their own private properties.
The three were also ordered to pay back some 21 million Egyptian pounds (roughly $3 million) to the state and pay fines worth a total of 125.7 million Egyptian pounds (around $17 million).
Legal sources say Mubarak is now expected to be released after having already served out the previous sentence, while his two sons will remain in detention pending a separate corruption trial.
"Mubarak's jail term ended over a week ago, but he will continue to stay at hospital due to his [poor] health condition," Mubarak lawyer Farid al-Deeb told reporters.
In late 2012, Mubarak and his interior minister, Habib al-Adly, were both sentenced to 25 years each in prison for their involvement in the murder of demonstrators during a popular uprising one year earlier that unseated the strongman after 30 years in office.
But another court later ordered a retrial after the former president's lawyers successfully appealed the sentence.
Last November, all the defendants were acquitted of the murder charges.
