A freed Mubarak should feel at home in today’s topsy turvy Egypt

The lads from state security are behaving with Mubarak-era ruthlessness

By Robert Fisk

"Mubarak to be freed? Crazy as it may seem, his freedom would be in keeping with the mad tragedy through which Egypt is living. What would seem impossible in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution – hundreds massacred by state security, police cadets slaughtered by desert gunmen, Mubarak out of jail – has acquired a kind of normality.....

On the streets of Cairo there have now appeared thousands of large coloured photographs of Barack Obama with Bin Laden’s beard attached to his chin and a Muslim prayer sign on his forehead. And to the right of Obama is that most handsome of all generals, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Minister of Defence, Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Egyptian army.

So there’s no doubt who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. State television’s three channels now run a 24-hour banner in English on the top left of the screen: “Egypt fighting terrorism”. And it seems viewers are inclined to believe it

That is putting it mildly. The lads from state security are back in all their Mubarak-like ruthlessness, assisted – as in 2011 – by the hired thugs and ex-prisoners who are used to club protesters with iron bars. So if Mubarak does emerge from the grim confines of the Tora prison complex – wherein his Brotherhood enemies are also being held – he will find the new Egypt of his freedom faintly familiar."