Cairo, August 2
Egypt’s fallen leader, Hosni Mubarak, goes on trial tomorrow over his role in killing protesters, in a stark message to Arab rulers elsewhere that they too may one day be held to account.

In domestic politics, putting the former president in the dock may help quell criticism of the generals now running Egypt, suspected by protesters of protecting their former commander.

Egyptians camped out in Cairo for more than three weeks in July demanded faster reforms by the army council, in power since Mubarak was ousted on February 11, including swifter trials of Mubarak and his aides over corruption and protester deaths.

Many suspect the military of foot-dragging over Mubarak, in hospital since April in Sharm el-Sheikh, a Red Sea resort. “The army has interests with the old regime. They are not doing anything for the people. They worked with Mubarak. They will not harm him, I swear,” Safa Mohamed, 41, said in Suez, scene of some of the worst violence in the 18-day uprising.

If convicted, Mubarak could face the death penalty. But few expect that outcome, even if some protesters want it. Many Egyptians will be pleased just to see him in court and in the cage where defendants in Egyptian criminal trials stand.

One has been erected in the Police Academy in Cairo which was named after Mubarak. His name has now been stripped off. A source close to Mubarak said last week that his lawyer would tell the judge that his client was too ill to attend. But the health minister said on Tuesday he could be moved.

Protesters are likely be enraged if he does not come. “The trial of Mubarak is a lesson to candidates for the presidency to know the fate of those who try to violate the freedom of the people or become autocratic,” said senior Muslim Brotherhood member Essam el-Erian.

The trial will have a wider impact in the region too. “It is also a warning message to all Arab rulers who use the same methods as Mubarak that they have to guard against a popular uprising, because if it succeeds then they are going to face the same fate,” said political analyst Mustapha al-Sayyed.

The message may have already reached Muammar Gaddafi and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who have shown no sign of quitting. Nor have they offered concessions akin to those Mubarak offered in vain in his final days in office when he named a vice- president and pledged not to seek another term.

Mubarak is not first Arab leader to be tried since the start of this year’s ‘Arab Spring’. Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was tried and sentenced in absentia because he fled to Saudi Arabia. Mubarak stayed in Egypt, swearing to die there.

Mubarak is standing trial alongside his two sons, Gamal, a former banker once seen as being groomed for top office, and Alaa, who had business interests. Also on trial will be former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli and six of his deputies. — Reuters

New York, August 2
President Barack Obama gifted a measuring tape to the commander of the US Seals, an elite navy unit which killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, after he found out that the commandos did not have one to measure the height of slain Al-Qaida leader following the covert raid.

Obama, also the Commander-in-Chief of the US military, gifted the measuring tape to Vice-Admiral Bill McRaven, the Seal in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) after the May 2 raid on bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad.

The President’s gesture came after he got to know that the Seals struggled to measure the height of 54-year-old bin Laden at a US airbase in the Afghan city of Jalalabad following the Al-Qaida leader’s killing, the New Yorker magazine said in its latest issue bringing into light new aspects of the entire mission, which was codenamed Operation Neptune’s Spear.

Laden was believed to be about 6’4”, “but no one had a measuring tape to confirm the body’s length. So one Seal, who was 6-feet tall, lay beside the corpse: it measured roughly four inches longer than the American,” the report said.

Earlier, when bin Laden’s body was brought, a pair of Seals unloaded the body bag and unzipped it so that McRaven and the CIA station chief could see the corpse with their own eyes.

Once McRaven was convinced that the body belonged to bin Laden, he appeared on the teleconference screen in the Situation Room in the White House and confirmed that the al- Qaeda chief’s body was in the bag.

Then the corpse was sent to Bagram airbase from where it was transported on a flip-wing V-22 Osprey aircraft to USS Carl Vinson - a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier sailing in the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden’s body was then given a sea burial. — PTI 

Amman, August 2
The death toll in Syria’s violent crackdown on opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in the city of Hama and elsewhere climbed on Tuesday, spurring Western efforts to pile diplomatic pressure on Damascus.

Italy recalled its ambassador from Syria on Tuesday in protest at the “horrible repression of the civilian population” and urged other European Union members to do the same. The EU formally added five more Syrian officials to an existing list of 29 individuals headed by Assad, whom the 27-nation bloc has targeted with asset freezes and travel bans. The five include Defence Minister Ali Habib, the head of internal security and the intelligence chief in Hama, which the EU says was the scene of a civilian “massacre” at the weekend.

Three more civilians were killed in Hama, including two brothers, Khaled and Fateh Kanil, who died when pro-Assad “shabbiha” militiamen fired at their food-laden car, two residents, one of them a doctor, told Reuters by telephone.

Tanks pounded residential neighbourhoods across Hama, the scene of a 1982 massacre, after evening prayers on Monday, the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, witnesses said.

State news agency SANA said “hundreds of masked gunmen on motorbikes” had set fire to the main law court in Hama on Monday afternoon and had also vandalised much of the building.

Human rights campaigners said assaults by Assad’s forces across Syria on Monday and Tuesday had killed at least 27 civilians, including 13 in Hama, where troops and tanks began a violent operation to regain control on Sunday.

That brought the total to about 137 dead throughout Syria in the past three days, 93 of them in Hama, according to witnesses, residents and rights campaigners. — Reuters