Mubarak faces trial from hospital bed

Pleads innocent to charges of corruption,complicity in killing of protesters.

An ailing Hosni Mubarak,who served longer than any ruler of modern Egypt until he was overthrown in a revolution in February,was rolled into a courtroom in a hospital bed Wednesday to face formal charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of protesters. The televised trial was a seminal moment for Egypt and an Arab world roiled by revolt.

Even the most ardent in calling for his prosecution doubted until hours before the trial began that Mubarak,83,would appear in a cage fashioned of bars and wire mesh. As a helicopter ferried him to the courtroom,housed in a police academy that once bore his name,cheers went up from a crowd gathered outside.

The criminal is coming! shouted Maged Wahba,a 40-year-old lawyer. The sheer symbolism of the day,covered live by television and watched by millions,made it one of the most visceral episodes in the Arab world,where uprisings have shaken the rule of authoritarian leaders.

The first defendant,Mohammed Hosni al-Sayyid Mubarak, the judge,Ahmed Rifaat,said,speaking to the cage holding Mubarak and his co-defendants his two sons,Gamal and Alaa,former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly and six other senior police officers. Sir,I am present, Mubarak replied into a microphone,from his bed.

You heard the charges that the prosecutor made against you, the judge said from his podium. What do you say? I deny all these accusations completely, he replied,wearily waving his hand. With those words,the reverberations of those epic protests in Tahrir Square were incarnated in one man,Mubarak,who last appeared in public on February 10,when he uttered a phrase that suggested the heedlessness of absolute authority. Its not about me, he said then,to the disbelief of thousands demonstrating in his capital. On this day,television captured him picking his nose. The two lines were the only words he uttered to the judge. Hard of hearing,Mubarak looked to his son to repeat the judges question to him.

While the other defendants took a seat,Mubaraks sons remained standing,the youngest,Gamal,seeming to block the view of his father from the cameras in the courtroom. Mubarak appeared tired but alert,occasionally speaking with his sons,who both held Qurans. As Mubarak denied the charges in the proceedings,which were broadcast outside the police academy,his opponents gathered there roared in disapproval. Then who did it? some asked. A few dozen of Mubaraks supporters shared space with his opponents. In intermittent clashes,the two sides threw rocks at each other. As Mubarak arrived at the courtroom,some of his supporters cried,waving pictures that read,The insult to Mubarak is an insult to all honourable Egyptians. Those sentiments were overwhelmed by the denunciations.

As late as Wednesday morning,there was speculation that Mubarak would not appear,given the remarkable humiliation that the trial represented. The military council of 19 generals that has led Egypt since the revolution seemed loath to put one of their own their former commander,no less in a courtroom. But it has been facing pressure from continuing protests.

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Wednesdays sessions was adjourned till August 15. The charges against Mubarak,a former interior minister and six officers can carry the death penalty. As a headline in a Egyptian newspaper read: The Day of Judgment.ANTHONY SHADID