Prosecutor orders release of Egypt's ousted leader Mubarak

CAIRO -- Egypt's ousted president Hosni Mubarak was ordered to be freed from detention Monday, according to the prosecutor who signed his release order, ending nearly six years of legal proceedings against the long-ruling autocrat.

The prosecutor, Ibrahim Saleh, said he ordered Mubarak's release after he accepted a petition by the former president's lawyer for his freedom on the basis of time served.

Mubarak, 88, was acquitted by the country's top appeals court March 2 of charges he ordered the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended his 29-year rule.

That verdict, according to Saleh, cleared the way for the lawyer to request his client be released because he has served a three-year sentence for embezzling state funds while in detention in connection to the protesters' case.

"There is not a single reason to keep him in detention, and the police must execute the order," Saleh said. "He is free to go."

A criminal court ruled in May 2015 to imprison Mubarak for three years after his conviction of embezzling funds set aside for the maintenance of presidential palaces.

Mubarak first was detained in April 2011 but has spent the nearly six years since in hospitals. He is staying at a Nile-side military hospital in the leafy suburb of Maadi, just south of Cairo.

It was not clear when he actually would leave and go home to the eastern suburb of Heliopolis.