JURIST - Paper Chase: Mubarak's sons charged with stock market fraud

[JURIST] The two sons of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak [Al Jazeera profile; JURIST news archive] are being charged with stock market fraud, the public prosecutor's office said Wednesday. Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, along with seven others, are accused of using unfair trading practices [Reuters report] and illegally manipulating the market. The two men, who were already incarcerated pending another trial, were not given an opportunity for bail. Gamal and Alaa Mubarak were arrested last April with their father and both are on trial for corruption charges associated with Mubarak's former regime. The verdicts for those cases are expected on June 2 [JURIST report].

Hosni Mubarak's trial started [JURIST report] in August 2011 and has been making slow progress. In January, the chief prosecutor in the case gave his closing remarks [JURIST report] and again asked the presiding judge, Ahmed Refaat, to give the death penalty [JURIST report] to Mubarak and some of his associates. The trial resumed in December in the Egyptian court after a two-month adjournment [JURIST reports] allowing the court time to rule on a motion made by lawyers representing the victims' families to have the three-judge panel in the case removed. The victims' families argued that they were not given enough time to question the Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi [GlobalSecurity profile], head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) [NYT backgrounder], who testified against Mubarak [JURIST report] in a closed session in September 2011, but left early and refused to be cross-examined by counsel of the victims.