CAIRO: A Cairo court Saturday fined ousted president Hosni Mubarak and two ex-ministers $90 million for “damaging the economy” with a telephone and Internet shutdown during Egypt's uprising. Mubarak, his former prime minister Ahmed Nazif and interior minister Habib Al-Adly were jointly “ordered to pay the state 540 million Egyptian pounds from their personal funds,” a judicial source said. They were charged with “damaging the economy after their decision to cut Internet and telephone services during the Jan. 25 revolution,” the source said, referring to the revolt which led to Mubarak's ouster on Feb. 11. Mubarak was ordered to pay 200 million Egyptian pounds ($33.5 million), Nazif 40 million pounds (around $6.7 million), while Adly came out with the heaviest fine of 300 million pounds ($50.3 million).The three have the right to appeal the ruling. Egypt's four main Internet service providers cut off access to their customers in a near simultaneous move on Jan. 28, just days after anti-Mubarak protests broke out. All three mobile operators in Egypt were also instructed to suspend services and obliged to comply under Egyptian law, British-based Vodafone said in a statement at the time. The five-day shutdown was the most comprehensive official electronic blackout of its kind, experts said. Around 23 million Egyptians have either regular or occasional access to the Internet, according to official figures, making up more than a quarter of the population. The communications shutdown drew international condemnation.
