[/caption]Standing outside the courtroom where Hosni Mubarak was awaiting his trial verdict on Saturday, Mediha Abdel-Aziz was one of about 40 people who had travelled to the desert fringes of eastern Cairo to support their former leader.
Penned into a small enclosure outside a giant police academy – the location of the makeshift courthouse where Mubarak was awaiting his fate – she was separated from a group of around 300 anti-government protesters by hundreds of officers from Egypt’s central security forces.
Speaking to Egypt Unwrapped, the smiley mother-of-three described her love of Egypt’s onetime President. “He governed Egypt for 30 years,” she said, “and now they say he was corrupt and killed protesters?
“If he had given the order to kill protesters then thousands more would have died.”
That was at around 9.30am. Just over an hour later, after Mubarak had been given a life sentence for his complicity in the deaths of hundreds of civilians, Mediha was on the warpath.
As jubilant anti-Mubarak protesters kissed the asphalt and let off volleys of fireworks, she took a 3ft long wooden plank and started chasing the nearby news photographers, tears streaming down her face.
Another enraged Mubarak supporter, his nose and mouth concealed by a bandana-like mask, charged at the press clutching his own large stick. With a cherry-red face and veins popping from the side of his head, he screamed: “Enough! Enough!”
But all of the commotion was just a side show. Very soon, the euphoria of Egypt’s anti-government activists and politicians turned to anger as they realised that despite the jailing of Hosni Mubarak, the verdict had been anything but conclusive.
Six top police officials, standing trial alongside their former President and also accused of killing protesters, were released without charge.
The acquittals meant that nearly 18 months after Egypt’s uprising first erupted, nobody has yet been found directly responsible for the deaths of more than 800 civilians at the hands of government forces.
It was confirmation – if confirmation were needed – that the so-called Egyptian Revolution is nothing but a cruel misnomer. The repressive organs of state nurtured under Hosni Mubarak are still in place, and the men who were doing his bidding are mostly still lurking in the shadows.
The result has been a week of protests reminiscent of the rallies which eventually brought down Hosni Mubarak himself.
By Saturday evening, Tahrir Square was filling up with Egyptians enraged by the acquittals of the six police chiefs.
More rallies followed on Tuesday, as youth groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and candidates defeated in last month’s presidential election all issued a call for nationwide protests.
Today – the so-called ‘Friday of Determination’ – thousands more protesters were filing into Tahrir Square. It marks the culmination of a week which has cast a shadow over this month’s presidential election run-off.
Yet unlike the demonstrations which eventually toppled Mubarak, the most recent round of protests are hamstrung by the lack of a single common aim.
Some civilians were moved to vent their anger due simply the trial verdict itself. Others, in particular activists from some of Egypt’s main youth coalitions, are demanding the cancellation of this month’s poll.
They believe that Ahmed Shafik, the former air force chief, should be disqualified from the run-off due to a law passed in April preventing ex-regime officials from competing in the poll.
But this is not approved by everyone. Certainly not the Muslim Brotherhood, whose frontrunner presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsi, stands to lose the most should the election be shelved.
And then of course there is the world outside Tahrir Square. More than five million people voted for Ahmed Shafik in the first round – virtually all of whom can be assumed to be opposed to further anti-government agitation.
It all makes for a very confusing picture. But what seems certain is this: after Egyptians elect their new president on June 16, there will be further conflict ahead.
