Toppled president Hosni Mubarak's retrial was adjourned until July on Monday after new documents and videos were submitted over his alleged complicity in the killings of protesters during Egypt's 2011 revolution. The criminal court in Cairo, on a technicality, also ordered the release of his two sons, Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, who have been on trial along with the former leader on corruption charges. The maximum two-year period of preventive detention has run out but the brothers are unlikely to walk free because of other charges against them, a judicial source said.

An Egyptian court in the retrial of fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak for alleged complicity in the killings of protesters barred lawyers in civil cases from the proceedings at a brief session on Saturday. Presiding judge Mahmoud al-Rashidi adjourned the court to Monday, shortly after opening the second hearing in Mubarak's retrial, a criminal case. Mubarak, 85, watched the proceedings while sitting up on a stretcher inside the defendants' cage, shared with seven of his former security commanders and his two sons.

CAIRO (Reuters) - A law drafted by the Egyptian presidency for regulating non-governmental organizations dashes hopes for a free civil society after the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. President Mohamed Mursi has said the bill submitted to the Muslim Brotherhood-led parliament on Wednesday would liberate a civil society that was stifled by Mubarak, who was toppled by an uprising ignited by democracy activists.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi said Tuesday his government will no longer privatise state firms, in a break with a policy launched in the 1990s by his ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak's regime. There will be "no more sale of the public sector, that is finished... and we will no longer do away with workers," he said in a televised May Day speech before workers in Helwan, south of Cairo. "Encouraging the private sector and private investments does not mean an alternative to the public sector, which must be developed," said the Islamist president who was elected last June.