“Gamal … is in a state of total disbelief,” reported an unnamed eyewitness, according to the English-language Web site of the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram. This afternoon, as word spread of the detentions of Gamal Mubarak and his older brother, Alaa, there were reports of jubilation in the streets of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort city where the siblings had spent the last month under house arrest alongside their father, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s deposed dictator. As riot police stood guard around the van carrying the siblings from their home, crowds of young men chanted “God is great!” and pelted the van with water bottles, stones, and flip-flops. Unshaven and clad in white training gear, Gamal and Alaa arrived at Tora Prison in Sharm el-Sheikh on Wednesday afternoon, and were whisked inside to face a fifteen-day investigation into corruption and their role in the violence that claimed the lives of eight hundred people during the February uprising. Meanwhile, state television reported that Hosni Mubarak, who is eighty-two, was in police custody but at a Sharm el-Sheikh hospital after a heart attack.
So marked the latest chapter in the relentless fall from grace of Gamal Mubarak, once considered the near-certain successor to his father. Today, with Egypt’s interim military rulers facing growing pressure to crack down on the widely hated former ruling family, those ambitions lie in ruins. The National Democratic Party headquarters on the Nile in Cairo, where I interviewed Gamal while he was still helping to direct Egypt’s economy and plotting his rise to power, was burned to the ground early in the revolution. (For a fuller look at just how far Gamal has tumbled, read my story “The Contenders,” which appeared in the April 5, 2010 issue of The New Yorker.) His closest cronies—including Ahmed Ezz, the steel magnate and former high-ranking member of the National Democratic Party—have been placed in custody and are awaiting prosecution. And Gamal himself has given up a life of palace hopping, London shopping sprees, and weekend soccer at Cairo’s most exclusive clubs for what could well be a long jail term.
Illustration: Vladimir Mochalov.
