Al-Sisi sees 'new future' for Egypt after Mubarak verdict

CAIRO

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said Egypt will never return to the past and is charting a new future, after a court dismissed murder charges against former leader Hosni Mubarak.

A Cairo court on Nov. 29 dropped the charges over the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended three decades of autocratic Mubarak rule.

In a statement issued in the late hours of Nov. 30, al-Sisi said “the new Egypt, which emerged from the January 25 and June 30 revolutions, is on a path to establish a modern democratic state based on justice, freedom, equality and a renunciation of corruption.”

“It is on an aspirational path to the future and can never go back to the past.”        

Al-Sisi said he had instructed Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab to review the provisions for compensation for the families of “martyrs and those wounded in the revolution.”

After Nov. 29’s verdict, al-Sisi said he had also asked the legal reform committee to examine amendments to the code of criminal procedure, as recommended by the court.

During the 2011 uprising, hundreds of thousands of people protested daily, demanding that Mubarak step down.

After he resigned they continued to stage demonstrations, insisting that he face trial.