Half a year and one week after his toppling, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was led to the accusation cage on a bed. His amazement during the first moments and the feeling of degradation for his status and that of his sons Ala'a and Gamal who shared this cage, echoed the amazement seen around the Arab world toward the outcomes of the revolutions, the uprisings and the daily killings that are refusing to leave the blockaded cities of the brave with tanks, missiles and the arsenals of the arrogant who believe there is no other way to be relieved from the blood of the martyrs except through additional destruction and bloodshed. When Mubarak was led to the cage yesterday, former Israeli Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer volunteered to deliver a testimony from afar and defend the “patriotism” of the former president who rejected – before his toppling – an offer made by Netanyahu to receive an Israeli treatment. This testimony is nothing but an attempt to impact the Egyptian public opinion and allow the prevalence of the logic of retaliation over the principle of justice, while the street is boiling after it awaited Mubarak's trial for six months. During that time, certain sides became obsessed with a conspiratorial fixation to rid the former president of the grip of accountability. What started yesterday is the first chapter of criminal justice following the end of political accountability with a sentence issued by the revolutionaries to remove the one who started his term three decades ago as a “hero,” and ended it as a “murderous and corrupt” ruler. And while the revolutionaries and the plaintiffs were watching Mubarak in bed inside the cage, the sight of the Syrian tanks in Hama intensifying the bombing of the population's homes was completing the other facet of the Arab revolutions' epic and their difficult labor. One Arab ruler is listening to the list of accusations made against him, while another is neither listening nor seeing based on the saying “me and no one else.” Saddam Hussein was tried under the spears of the Americans and Mubarak before a national court. And to the international criminal tribunal, Gaddafi is wanted after Al-Bashir, although he will surely choose to proceed with the great massacre in Libya over being humiliated in a cage, even if it is for presidents solely. Mubarak has the privilege of facing non-foreign justice and can be reassured about the absence of any interferences, despite the fact that the nature of the accusations will lead to the same fate. And on the eve of the trial at the Police Academy, the dubious message, which was no less hypocritical than the Israeli “treatment” offer, was the statement of the Al-Qaeda organization in the Sinai Peninsula that bombed Egypt's unity with the “Islamic Emirate” project and cast additional suspicions over the ambitions of the Islamists, particularly those accused of exploiting the revolution. Moreover, the military council is not excluded as the possible target of a statement seeking to undermine all the attempts to restore stability and move the country from the stage of revolutionary legitimacy to that of elected legitimacy. Mubarak is in the cage while all of Egypt is still going through the labor pangs of the revolution. And regardless of his denial of having given orders to kill the demonstrators, the eyes of the supporters of justice will remain on the cage. Indeed, there is fear he will manage to plant additional hatred among the Egyptians and fuel the conflict between the revolutionaries and the “class” of beneficiaries from the former regime, who are questioning the judiciary to undermine its legal neutrality while using the charge of the revolutionaries' drift toward retaliation. Mubarak in a cage is a scene from a historical drama in Egypt. And although most of the Egyptians and Arabs believe there is no room for comparison between the humiliation of a president and the humiliation of a people, the other facet of the drama resides in nearby capitals where the presidents do not see an exit from punishment and accountability except through further bloodshed and terror. Between the scene of Saddam Hussein coming out of the hole and that of Mubarak on his bed in court, there are chapters of futility exerted by presidents-emperors who assassinated dozens of years in the history of the Arabs.
