An Egyptian court today postponed until November 29 its verdict in the retrial of former President Hosni Mubarak for alleged complicity in the killing of protesters during the 2011 revolution that toppled him.
Chief Judge Mahmoud Kamel el-Rashidi said during the televised trial that the case contained 160,000 papers, and reading through them was taking time.
"We have written 60 per cent of the verdict's reasons but still haven't finished, that's why we are postponing issuing this verdict," said the judge as he postponed the verdict until November 29.
The court also screened a short documentary showing the 160,000 papers which were gathered into two rooms in the judge's residence.
The 86-year-old former strongman, dressed in a blue uniform of a convicted felon and wearing his trademark shades, was wheeled on an upright stretcher into the caged dock.
When the names of the defendants were called out, Mubarak responded by raising his hand.
He arrived in a helicopter to New Cairo's Police Academy ahead of the expected verdict.
Several of Mubarak's supporters and opponents gathered outside the academy where Cairo's Criminal Court was expected to issue its verdict in the re-trial.
Families of the victims held pictures of relatives they lost while Mubarak supporters chanted slogans questioning whether Egypt had really improved following Mubarak's ouster.
Mubarak is being retried on charges of his complicity in the killing of around 850 unarmed protesters during the January, 2011 uprising that ended his 30-year rule.
His sons Gamal and Alaa, Mubarak-era interior minister Habib El-Adly, and six of El-Adly's aides are also charged in the same case.
The former autocrat was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2012 but the verdict was successfully appealed in January 2013 as the presiding judge ruled that there was not enough evidence presented by the prosecution.
Mubarak's re-trial began in April, 2013.
Egypt has been wracked by political turmoil since the overthrow of Mubarak and later under its first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Morsi's term was plagued by political uncertainty and violence in a deeply polarised country that ultimately led to his ouster by the powerful military in July last year following mass protests against his rule.
