Egyptian presidential candidates divided over rulings in Mubarak trial

The court rulings on Saturday to jail deposed president Hosni Mubarak for life and acquit his sons Gamal and Alaa were condemned by Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate Mohammad Mursi as “comical” and were hailed by his rival candidate Ahmad Shafiq.

In a statement posted on his twitter account Mursi called for a retrial with solid evidence of Mubarak, his sons and other senior members of the deposed regime.

Yasser Ali, official spokesman for Mursi’s campaign, earlier said, “The public prosecutor did not carry out its full duty in gathering adequate evidence to convict the accused for killing protesters.”

Mursi later called on Egyptians to continue their “revolution” as thousands protested against a controversial verdict in Hosni Mubarak’s trial.

“All of us, my brothers, must realize in this period that the continuation of the revolution, and the revolutionaries’ staying put in their positions in the squares, is the only guarantee to achieve the goals,” he said at a news conference.

Mursi added that he would be joing the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Mubarak and his former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, who was in charge of the police and other security forces at the time of the uprising, were convicted of failing to act to stop the killings during the opening days of the revolt, when the bulk of protesters died. El-Adly also received a life sentence.

Moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who was eliminated in the first round of the presidential race last month, meanwhile condemned the acquittal of Mubarak’s sons and the senior figures of the Central Security (SS) service.

Aboul Fotouh said the acquittal of el-Adly’s aids “is tantamount to the acquittal of the powers of repression and corruption that still govern Egypt.”

On the opposite, the former military man who will compete with the Mursi in a run-off presidential vote this month, said that the jailing of Mubarak in a trial over protester killings proved no one was above the law.

“We do not have a right to comment on judicial rulings but this verdict indicates that no one is above questioning if the law requires,” said Shafiq, who has described Mubarak as a role model on his official Facebook page.

“Those rulings certainly disprove any claims that a presidential candidate can reproduce a ruling system that has ended,” he said, responding to critics who say Shafiq, who was also Mubarak’s last prime minister, would revive the old order.

Reform leader and the former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in a statement posted on his twitter account that the “old regime puts itself on trial” and that “continued efforts to abort the revolution in cahoots with established political forces” were ongoing.

He added that Egypt was in a “critical juncture.”