Speaking of impending executions

David Kirkpatrick and Liam Stack (that dynamic reporting duo) have an article in The New York Times about the situation in Egypt:

With tensions rising between Egypt’s military rulers and demonstrators, the authorities took a major step toward satisfying the protesters’ demands for retribution against Hosni Mubarak, ordering the detention of the former president and his two sons. The detention, announced by a prosecutor appointed by Mr. Mubarak before his ouster in February, represents a breathtaking reversal for Egypt’s former strongman, whose grip seemed so unshakable just three months ago that some thought he could hand over power directly to his son Gamal.
The three will be questioned about corruption and abuse of power during Mr. Mubarak’s three-decade rule, the authorities said. The Egyptian Health Ministry has said that more than eight hundred people were killed during the eighteen-day revolt that ended Mr. Mubarak’s rule.
The detention is also the latest twist in the unfinished story of a revolution that became a touchstone for the broader Arab Spring. The military officers who seized power and pledged a transition to democracy after Mr. Mubarak stepped down have faced escalating street protests calling for his prosecution and, increasingly, criticism for the slow pace of political reforms.
The military has cracked down with mounting force, beating and torturing as many as two hundred protesters over the last several weeks, and killing two in a recent clash, local rights groups say. some human rights activists complained that the transitional government’s actions against the Mubaraks and many of their top allies risked perpetuating the pattern of extralegal and politically motivated detentions under the Mubarak government.
Military leaders have sought to deflect blame for the violence to Mr. Mubarak and his former ruling party. Tthe governing military council asserted that it was “remnants” of the Mubarak government who had incited the violence in Tahrir Square here on Saturday morning.
Gamal and his brother Alaa were jailed in Tora Prison, where many of their closest allies have been imprisoned as well. State television reported that Mr. Mubarak, 82, was in police custody at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik after a heart attack.
The Egyptian prosecutor said that he had ordered Mr. Mubarak and his sons detained for interrogation for fifteen days, a standard legal procedure under the Mubarak government that could be renewed, as it often was, and extended for far longer periods. The governing military council had previously said only that Mr. Mubarak and his family were barred from leaving the country. Since leaving office on 11 February, he has resided with his sons at the family home in Sharm el Sheik.
During questioning, the state-run newspaper al-Ahram reported, Mr. Mubarak complained of chest pains. He was taken to the hospital, but his affliction was evidently mild enough that prosecutors continued questioning him. State television reported that he would remain hospitalized.
The English-language website of al-Ahram reported, citing an unnamed source, that the two Mubarak sons had arrived at the prison unshaven and wearing white training outfits. “Gamal did not look like the Gamal we have seen on television; he is in a state of total disbelief”, the unnamed source at the prison was quoted as saying.
Word of the detention of the Mubarak brothers ignited exuberant demonstrations in Sharm el Sheik, with a crowd of young men chanting Fifteen days! and God is great! in the face of riot police officers who stood guard as the two were driven away, according to amateur video. The Associated Press reported that a crowd pelted the police van with water bottles, stones, and flip-flops.
Mubarak critics in Cairo cheered the news as well. “On the road to protecting the revolution,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who became a critic of Mr. Mubarak and is now a candidate to succeed him, said in a Twitter message. “We now need to focus on achieving its goals.”
Abdullah el-Ashaal, a former Foreign Ministry official who is another presidential candidate, argued that the military council had acceded to the protesters’ demands to prosecute Mr. Mubarak in part to protect the military from public wrath. “The military wanted to put an end to all the suspicions surrounding it, and to the accusation that they were with Mubarak and not with the revolution. Things had reached the point where people started to call for toppling Tantawi,” Mr. Ashaal said. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the military’s leader, is now the de facto head of state. “We want to see Mubarak executed,” Mr. Ashaal added. “Did Mubarak not execute the Egyptian people?”
Others were more cautious. “As gratifying as it is to hear that the unseated dictator has been interrogated and detained, we remain concerned about the lack of a transparent and predictable process for investigating and prosecuting past abuses, whether financial corruption or human rights violations,” Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and a leading civil rights advocate, wrote in an email. “The only guarantee against politically motivated prosecutions and arbitrary trials is to establish a formal and credible process of transitional justice,” he wrote.
Tora Prison, where the Mubarak sons were taken, already holds many prominent figures from their father’s government: Ahmed Nazif, the former prime minister; Habib el-Adly, the former minister of the interior who led the crackdown against anti-Mubarak demonstrators; Ahmed Ezz, a businessman and former governing party power broker; Safwat el-Sherif, a former lawmaker and secretary general of the party; and Zakariya Azmi, Mr. Mubarak’s former chief of staff.
Perhaps aware that prosecutors were closing in on him, Mr. Mubarak late last week released his first public statement since leaving office, an audiotape in which he imperiously denied self-enrichment and defended his name.
Some Egyptians say that Mr. Mubarak, their head of state for a generation, should be treated with respect, while others say they fear that too much noisy protest calling for his punishment could provoke a military backlash. But public pressure for his prosecution reached a peak when tens of thousands of people rallied in Tahrir Square to call for public trials of Mr. Mubarak and his associates, including members of the military council that now rules the country. A handful of military officers joined that protest, denouncing Field Marshal Tantawi as a corrupt vestige of the old guard. A few hours after midnight, military police officers and security forces moved in to clear out the square, resulting in clashes that killed at least two and wounded dozens. A determined core of protesters erected a barricade of barbed wire and remained in the square until Tuesday afternoon. Local news reports said men in civilian clothes armed with clubs— a sight long associated with extralegal punishment and intimidation by the Mubarak government— battled protesters and removed their barricades. The news reports said the military police detained suspected protesters as they fled the square.
A few weeks ago, the Egyptian military also sent a letter to Egyptian news organizations, instructing them of “the necessity to refrain from publishing any items— stories, news, announcements, complaints, advertisements, and pictures— pertaining to the armed forces or to commanders of the armed forces” without the prior approval of the military. The letter was first reported by Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, and both groups also noted that the blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting the military”, continuing a pattern of censorship set under Mr. Mubarak.
Though Mr. Mubarak has traveled to Germany for medical treatment in the past, little is known about the state of his health, a taboo topic during his nearly thirty years as the leader of Egypt. As recently as 2008, a prominent newspaper editor, Ibrahim Eissa, was sentenced to six months in prison for publishing articles on the subject. The sentence was later reduced and Mr. Eissa was pardoned. Rumors have circulated that Mr. Mubarak has had pancreatic and colon cancer.
With the news that his hospitalization had interrupted his questioning or prevented his imprisonment, some said they feared that the military was staging “an elaborate ruse to get him out of the country for treatment”, as Hani Shakrallah, editor of al-Ahram’s website, said. Or perhaps it was the aging autocrat’s pride, Mr. Shakrallah suggested: “It is possible they brought him in for the questioning, and the man got so upset that he fell ill.”

Rico says the Egyptians won't screw around with sodium thiopental, either; they'll shoot the sumbitch... (But, while pelting cops with flip-flops might sound silly to us, you need to remember the Arab fetish about hitting people with shoes; it's a profound insult, apparently.)