Quotes of the Day

In the nearly three months since the revolution in Egypt, the popular imagination of the Arab world's largest country has been gripped by a new obsession: how to mete justice to ex-President Hosni Mubarak and high-ranking members of his regime, including his two sons.

Some Egyptians want clean, flat-out revenge, with punishments handed out and heads rolling. At the least, they want the men they blame for Egypt's woes held accountable and they want something back as compensation for the billions of dollars they allege the regime stole from the public through corruption. "The trial is the most important thing right now — to convict the ex-president and the ex-regime," says Ali Mokhtar al-Qatan, who spent 14 years behind bars after criticizing Mubarak to his face when both men were on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1993. "If we say it's a bad house, we need to tear it down to build it again."

Almost daily, the Egyptian newspapers — including the official state press — offer coverage of fresh corruption charges, including pictures of newly jailed officials being carted away in white jumpsuits and juicy details of how the rich and powerful are faring behind bars in Tora Prison, a sprawling concrete complex south of Cairo that previously housed some of Egypt's most prominent opposition leaders. Mubarak, who continues to reside in hospital detention in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, for health reasons, is "terrified" of Tora, one state paper reported; while his sons Gamal and Alaa, along with other ex-ministers and party leaders, though dressed in prison garb, are dining on food catered by the Four Seasons, other reports allege. Other reports have the sons depressed with finding themselves in jail.

For some Egyptians, the news and gossip are both titillating and outrageous. But for others, jail is jail. "No one ever imagined that even a servant in one of their homes could be made to go to prison. So the fact that these people are in prison now is a miracle," says Qatan, cracking a wide grin. "It will be the trial of the century."

But can justice really be served within Egypt's still unstable political climate? Many fear that the Mubaraks may benefit from a web of connections that still exists and a justice system that — like the rest of Egypt's state institutions — has been beleaguered by corruption and lack of transparency for decades. The Ministry of Justice is seen as such a weak institution — and the due process it practices still experimental — that the country's current power brokers, the military, have deemed hundreds of cases more appropriate for military courts. The Mubaraks and their alleged cronies, on the other hand, will receive trials in vicil courts. "Those being tried in military courts are thugs and bullies," says one Army officer who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Many of Tahrir Square's most diehard activists suspect there is no way the Supreme Military Council, led by Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, a long-time Mubarak ally, is going to let its old commander-in-chief receive a tough verdict — or even a balanced trial. "Gamal and Alaa [Mubarak's sons] should be in jail for life — or at least 20 years — and execution for [Hosni] Mubarak," says Essam al-Sherif, a political activist who took part in a mock trial for the former president in Tahrir Square two weeks ago. "But I don't expect to see him executed. The military and Mubarak's relationship spans 30 years," he says. "So I think they'll hold him for 15-day periods, one after the other, and that will calm people down and enable them to go on with their lives. I think Mubarak will die before there's ever a trial. They will delay it as long as possible."

To Egyptian investigators, the matter of paperwork is proving burdensome — and a task for which they may not be prepared for. They are frustrated by the fact that governments in Europe and the United States demand legwork — and paperwork — to locate the evidence needed to prove the case against the Mubaraks in court and, just as importantly, to physically return a lot of the allegedly stolen money to Egypt's coffers. "The countries who control those accounts are making really difficult demands in order to remove the privacy for those accounts," says Assem al-Gohary, Egypt's Deputy Minister of Justice, and the chairman of the committee tasked with recovering the stolen assets. "You as a reporter should tell the countries that they need to help us by loosening the conditions."

On a busy Sunday at the Justice Ministry in downtown Cairo, Asser Mahmoud Harb, an official on the team tasked with locating Mubarak's foreign assets, says his job is so much more difficult than it needs to be. He complains that the general prosecutor's office — which is looking into charges that Mubarak and members of his entourage ordered violence against civilians — has an easier task because it can rely on testimonies alone. They don't need bank statements, he says. "They have the option of relying on witnesses. For proving wealth, we have to get documents for everything." Each state in the European Union has different demands, says Harb. "Furthermore the European Union decision [to preemptively freeze accounts belonging to Egypt's and Tunisia's corrupt leaders] only covers accounts under the personal names of the accused. It does not include accounts under business names."

Western diplomats in Cairo argue that there's nothing unusual about their governments' procedures, but they do admit that mismatched legal standards have slowed the process of reclaiming allegedly purloined assets. Still, one high-ranking Western official was bewildered by what Egyptians claimed was a hefty file full of evidence to facilitate access to various accounts. Much of the file turned out to be little more than personal testimonies, the official said, not the hard documents needed to overrule privacy laws protecting bank accounts.

Meanwhile, some observers caution that the loud calls for revenge may not serve the cause of justice either. They argue that anger and the threat of huge protests in Tahrir Square may simply force the military to set up kangaroo courts and sentence certain officials to appease the mob. "They are angry. And anger blocks clear vision," says Leila Takla, a prominent law professor and women's rights activist, and a former member of parliament for the recently-dissolved ruling party. "I don't think the shouts and screams in Tahrir should be the decisive factor. It should run within the rule of law and due process." Indeed, even activists like Sherif believe that it was hardly coincidental that Mubarak and his sons were only detained after a weekend of renewed protests in Tahrir Square.

The Justice Ministry says the Mubaraks were detained when they were because that's how long it took investigators to gather enough evidence to order their arrest. Several other members of the ex-regime, including the much-hated ruling party bigwig and steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz, and ex-interior minister Habib al-Adly were rounded up two months ago. But the fact that a formerly untouchable clas of wealthy and powerful politicians are now in prison remains, for post-revolutionary Egypt, one of the most surprising and shocking of developments.

• Abigail Hauslohner / Cairo