A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Mubarak Back in Tura; Lawyers Trying to Get Him Out

A month or so after that strange week when Egypt's Schrödinger's ex-President Husni Mubarak was reported by the State News Agency MENA to be clinically dead, but then he got much, much better, he was transported back to Tura Prison yesterday because, well, he's not dead anymore and he's supposed to be serving a life sentence, not receiving excellent treatment in an elite military hospital.

Tura Prison
His lawyers are trying to get him sent back to the hospital because there is a law saying heroes of the 1973 war must be respected and because Mubarak is a hero of the 1973 war. (In point of fact his role in the 1973 war, as Air Force Commander, has gotten more and more heroic since he became President in 1981, a sort of retroactive heroism. If he'd been President much longer they'd have had him manning a SAM site and shooting down Israeli aircraft single-handed.)

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