Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may be executed if the provisional government carries out its vow to prosecute him for corruption and murder.
The new Justice Minister, Abdel al-Guindi, told the Al-Ahram Egyptian newspaper Saturday that Mubarak, his wife and two sons will be charged for the deaths of more than 800 protesters during the uprising earlier this year that led to his ouster. The elderly former leader was placed under house arrest and last month was hospitalized for a heart attack while being questioned.
"Certainly, if convicted for the crime of killing protesters, it could result in the death sentence," said el-Guindi. "The only one capable of pardoning Mubarak ... would be the new president. If I were the president, I will not pardon him for killing 800 martyrs."
Mubarak and his family allegedly have amassed a fortune of tens of billions of dollars that would rank him as the world’s wealthiest man.
Some of the money reportedly was pocketed through a deal to export Egyptian natural gas to Israel, an agreement that most Egyptians say they want cancelled along with the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
Israel is highly concerned over the new government, which facilitated last week’s Hamas-Fatah agreement and has decided to open up the Rafiah crossing at Gaza.
"These developments can affect Israel's national security at a strategic level,” a senior Israeli official told The Wall Street Journal last week.
Opening the Rafiah border would allow a free flow of weapons into Gaza and an outflow of terrorists into the Sinai, from where they often stage attacks on tourists and try to infiltrate into Israel to kill Israelis.
Egypt also has made diplomatic overtures to Iran, raising the possibility of Israel facing a widening Iranian axis with Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas that already threatens Israel from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.