Six years after his ouster, Egypt's ex-President Hosni Mubarak has been released from detention after being cleared of inciting the killings of hundreds of protesters in 2011.
Mubarak, 88, on Friday March 24,2017 left a military hospital in Cairo's southern suburb of Maadi where he had been held in custody and went to his home in the upscale Heliopolis district under heavy security.
Mubarak was cleared for release earlier this monthafter the country's highest appeals court acquitted him of any involvement in the deaths of nearly 900 Egyptians during the 25 January - 11 February 2011 uprising.
He had been sentenced to life in 2012 but an appeals court dismissed the charges two years later.
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A former air force chief and vice president, Mubarak became president after fighters who had infiltrated the army shot dead president Anwar Sadat during a military parade in 1981.
Mubarak, then vice president, was metres away from Sadat during the attack and was shot in the hand. He was sworn in as president eight days later
The ouster of Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 29 years, led to the country's first free election but the winner, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown in a military coup in 2013.
Army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has since waged a fierce crackdown on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood with human rights groups claiming as many as 60,000 political prisoners currently languish in Egypt's jails.
In contrast, Mubarak-era figures are slowly being cleared of charges and a series of laws curtailing political freedoms have raised fears among activists that the old leadership is regaining influence.
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