Mubarak-era Interior Minister Habib al-Adly escaped from his home a few hours before security forces went to arrest him to implement a court verdict sentencing him to seven years in prison on corruption charges, sources with Giza Security Directorate said.
Giza Security Directorate received the executive form of the court verdict, said the sources. Security authorities are currently hunting Adly like they would any fugitive.
Cairo Court of Appeal set a session on Tuesday to consider the appeal filed by Adly demanding that the start of the sentence be postponed until the Court of Cassation decides on it.
Cairo Criminal Court convicted Adly and other officials on charges of appropriating the ministry’s funds and acquiring illicit gains amounting to LE2.4 billion.
The court sentenced Habib al-Adly, former interior minister; Nabil Khalaf, former head of the Ministry’s Central Administration of Finances and Budget; and Ahmed Abdel Nabi, formerly a senior researcher at the same administration, to seven years in prison and ordered them to repay around LE196 million, also fining them the same sum.
The court sentenced eight others to five years in prison each and sentenced two others to three years in prison.
In addition to these sentences, Adly, along with nine other defendants, was ordered to repay the government LE529 million.
Adly and the 12 other defendants were referred to criminal court in August 2015 over charges of illicit gains while serving in government posts.
The defendants were accused of using their influence to acquire illicit gains amounting to LE2.4 billion (close to $300 million at the exchange rate of the time) while Adly was interior minister.
Adly served as Mubarak’s minister of interior from 1997 until 2011. He was released from detention in March 2015, after being acquitted on charges of using his political influence to acquire illicit gains amounting to LE181 million.
In 2014, he was acquitted along with six of his aides and former president Hosni Mubarak on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during the January 2011 uprising.
In a separate case, Adly also saw an initial 12-year sentence and LE15 million’s worth of fines dropped, over charges of corruption and money laundering.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
