CAIRO, (AFP) — Egyptian ex-president Hosni Mubarak, charged with murder, “had complete knowledge of every bullet fired” at protesters, according to damning testimony by his former spy chief published in a state newspaper on Thursday.
The Al-Akhbar daily reported that prosecutors partly relied on testimony provided by Omar Suleiman, the former head of intelligence and briefly vice president, to charge Mubarak with premeditated murder.
“Mubarak had complete knowledge of every bullet fired at protesters, and the number of those killed or wounded,” Suleiman is reported to have told prosecutors.
Suleiman said he relayed to the president hourly updates on the police’s deadly response to the mass protests that began on January 25 to overthrow Mubarak, who ruled the country for three decades.
“The reports included all instances of firing live ammunition and rubber bullets at protesters in an attempt to abort the revolution,” Al-Akbar reported.
Mubarak may be found guilty even if he did not order the killings of demonstrators but simply allowed the shootings to continue, a senior judge said before Mubarak was charged this week.
An official inquiry found that at least 846 people were killed during the revolt that ousted Mubarak on February 11, many of them from gunshot wounds. The justice minister has said Mubarak may be put to death if convicted.
Mubarak, 83, also faces other charges of corruption. He is in police custody in a hospital in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, after reportedly suffering a heart attack during an interrogation.
A judicial source said the ex-president was formally notified of the charges on Thursday in his hospital room. His two sons, who face the same charges, were notified in their Cairo prison.
The source added that the location and date of the trial would be decided soon.
A medical team commissioned by the public prosecutor has found that the ousted dictator’s health is stable, but he is in a “bad psychological state” and suffers “from mood swings,” the official MENA news agency reported.
The public prosecutor had tasked the interior ministry with transferring Mubarak to a military hospital and then to Cairo’s Tora prison, where his sons are being held, when it finishes medical preparations to receive him.