CAIRO - Egypt's deposed president Hosni Mubarak was admitted to a prison hospital following a "health crisis" on Saturday after he was sentenced to life in prison, the state's news agency MENA reported.
"Mubarak has entered to Tora prison hospital after coming out from the aircraft that was transferring him from court to prison," the agency said. Mubarak, who had been in a military hospital during the trial, flew in a helicopter from the court.
A state-owned news channel, Nile News, reported that Mubarak suffered a heart attack. The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the veracity of the report. Mubarak has been rumored to have suffered heart attacks on a number of occasions since stepping down from his post amid protests in February 2011.
An Egyptian judge convicted Mubarak of
complicity in the killings of protesters during the uprising that ended
his 30-year rule.
It
was the first time a deposed Arab leader had faced an ordinary court in
person since a wave of uprisings shook the Arab world last year,
sweeping away four entrenched rulers.
The ruling came at a
politically fraught time for Egypt, two weeks before a run-off in its
first free presidential election that will pit the Muslim Brotherhood,
which was banned under Mubarak, against the deposed autocrat's last
prime minister.
Mubarak, propped up on a hospital stretcher and
wearing dark sunglasses, heard the verdict with a stony expression. He
had been wheeled into the cage used in Egyptian courtrooms, while the
other defendants stood.
Demonstrators outside the court, many of
whom had been demanding the death penalty for Mubarak, greeted the
verdict with fireworks and cries of "Allahu akbar (God is great)".
Soha
Saeed, the wife of one of about 850 people killed in the street revolt
that toppled Mubarak on Feb. 11, 2011, shouted: "I'm so happy. I'm so
happy."
Some people inside the court who had wanted a death
sentence scuffled with guards, decrying the Mubarak-era judiciary. "The
people want the judiciary cleansed!" they chanted.
Judge
Ahmed Refaat opened the proceedings by calling the start of Mubarak's
trial on Aug. 3 a "historic day". He hailed Egyptians for removing the
only leader many of them had known.
"The people of Egypt woke on
Tuesday, Jan. 25, to a new dawn, hoping that they would be able to
breathe fresh air ... after 30 years of deep, deep, deep darkness," he
told the court.
Total silence fell over the courtroom in the
moments before Refaat announced his verdict. The crowd outside then
erupted in joy. Anti-Mubarak demonstrators and a smaller crowd of his
supporters threw stones at each other and at police.
The judge
also sentenced Mubarak's former interior minister, Habib al-Adli, to
life in prison. He sentenced Mubarak's two sons Alaa and Gamal to time
already served after convicting them on some corruption charges and
acquitting them on others.
Six security officials were acquitted. Many
Egyptians are angry that the hated police force, blamed for many of the
deaths in the uprising, and other pillars of Mubarak's rule have
survived his downfall intact.
A helicopter had flown Mubarak to
the court on the outskirts of Cairo from the military-run hospital where
he has been held in custody.
Egyptian state television said the
prosecutor-general had ordered that Mubarak be transferred to prison
from hospital to serve his sentence. No details were immediately given.
His co-defendants have been held for months in a Cairo prison.
Hundreds of police with riot shields and batons surrounded the police academy where the 10-month trial has been held.
"Enough talk, we want execution!" protesters chanted outside before the verdict.
Few Egyptians had expected Mubarak would go to the gallows, although protesters have often hung his effigy from lamp posts.
"I
want nothing less than the death penalty for Mubarak. Anything less and
we will not be silent and the revolution will break out again," Hanafi
el-Sayed, whose 27-year-old son was killed early in the uprising, said
just before the verdict. He had travelled from Alexandria for the trial.
In a June 16 and 17 run-off, Ahmed Shafiq, an ex-air force chief like Mubarak, will face the Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi.
Shafiq
has called his former boss a role model. His Islamist rival says that
if he becomes president he will ensure enough evidence is produced to
keep Mubarak behind bars for life.
"It is not possible to release
Mubarak," Mursi told Reuters on Thursday. "I promise the martyrs (of
the uprising) will retrieve their rights in full, God willing."