Hosni Mubarak
Egypt's ousted President Hosni Mubarak sits inside a dock at the police academy (Reuters)

Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is due to be released this week after the prosecutor cleared him in corruption case.

"All we have left is a simple administrative procedure that should take no more than 48 hours. He should be freed by the end of the week," Mubarak's lawyer Fareed El-Deeb told Reuters.

Mubarak, 85, was charged with squandering billions in public funds along with his two sons Alaa and Gamal and illicitly redirecting state funds allocated for the renovation for presidential palaces towards private residences.

Mubarak, who is being held at Tora prison on the southern outskirts of Cairo, also faces charges of conspiracy to kill protesters.

Mubarak, who was president of Egypt for 30 years, was removed amid a wave of popular protest in 2011.

He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison along with his former interior minister, Habib el-Adly for failing to stop killing during the 2011 uprising. But a court ordered a retrial in January.

Meanwhile, the current turmoil in Egypt has created an opportunity for the rehabilitation of the Mubarak legacy. Egyptian and foreign analysts and diplomats suggest that civilian ministers in the military-backed interim government are under pressure from security hawks who served under the deposed Hosni Mubarak and were brought back after Morsi's removal.

It is these "dinosaurs", it is said, who are now driving policy towards the Islamists, according to Ian Black, the Middle East Editor of The Guardian.

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