Gwynne Dyer: Mubarak trial a sign of the new Egypt

Former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was wheeled into court last week in a hospital bed (his lawyers claim he is very ill), and put into the same kind of iron cage that so many of his opponents were tried in before they were jailed or hanged. The charges are corruption and ordering the killing of protesters during the Egyptian revolution last February.
If convicted of the latter charge, he could face the death sentence, but he is unlikely ever to dangle at the end of a rope. No matter. He is 83 years old and in poor health, so even a few years in prison would be effectively a death sentence. This trial is not about the fate of a few wicked men. (Mubarak's sons and seven close associates are also on trial.) It's about a new Egypt where the law must be obeyed even by the powerful.
It's the fact that the trial is taking place that matters, not the severity of the punishment. But given that the soldiers are still in charge, most Egyptians are still stunned to see it actually happening.
It was the Egyptian military who intervened on February 11 to force Mubarak to resign from power and end the killing. Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi heads the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that serves as an interim government pending free elections in Egypt. But the Egyptian army has never been a hotbed of democracy.
Tantawi, 75, was personally close to the deposed dictator. Mubarak is a former general himself, and the military do not like to see one of their own humiliated in public. There has also been great pressure from the surviving Arab autocracies not to have a former ruler put on trial.
Most Egyptians therefore never expected to see Mubarak on trial in open court, but the military have their own interests to defend. During 57 years of thinly disguised military rule they have built up an enormously lucrative presence in housing complexes, banking, and all sorts of other non-military activities. They also get a huge share of the country's budget. The country's senior officers realise that they have to make a deal with at least some of the civilian political forces in post-Mubarak Egypt if they want to keep their privileges. Putting Mubarak on trial is a down-payment on that deal - but who are their prospective civilian partners? A lot of the young people who actually made the revolution happen suspect that it is the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood in power would do some things that the military would not welcome, like breaking relations with Israel .
But if accepting such policies is the price they must pay to defend their own privileges, the military will pay it.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.