The ruling means that Mr Mubarak could leave prison as early as Thursday.
Leaving the Cairo prison where the court convened, Fareed El-Deeb, his lawyer, said: "The court decided to release him." Asked when, he said: "Maybe tomorrow".
Mr Mubarak, 85, is being retried on charges of ordering the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that led to his downfall. However, he has already served out the maximum amount of pretrial detention permitted in that case.
He was sentenced to life in prison last year for failing to prevent the killing of demonstrators. But a court accepted his appeal earlier this year and ordered a retrial.
Given his age he is thought unlikely to return to a political role. But the prospect of the former dictator being at liberty once more is likely to spark fresh street disturbances across Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand that he step down in January 2011. » | Harriet Alexander, and Colin Freeman | Wednesday, August 21, 2013
