On March 24, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was freed from detention after he was cleared earlier this month of the charge of ordering the killing of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 mass uprising that toppled him. He discreetly left the military hospital in southern Cairo where he had been under house arrest for the last six years to return to his home in the upscale Cairo district of Heliopolis.
Egyptians received the news of his release with mixed reactions. Many of his supporters were overcome with joy, saying the revolution was a “foreign conspiracy” and that his acquittal “is long overdue.”