An Egyptian court is to deliver Saturday its verdict in the murder retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak, almost four years after he was overthrown in a popular uprising.

Ahead of the ruling, security was beefed up around the court at the sprawling police academy on the outskirts of Cairo, with 5,000 police deployed, the official MENA news agency reported, citing a senior official.

Mubarak, 86, is accused along with seven of his former police commanders of involvement in the killing of hundreds of demonstrators during the 2011 revolt that ended his three-decade rule.

An appeals court overturned an initial life sentence for Mubarak in 2012 on a technicality.

The new verdict was initially scheduled for September 27, but chief judge Mahmud Kamel al-Rashidi postponed it, saying he had not finished writing the reasoning after a retrial that saw thousands of case files presented.

The court is also due to rule on corruption charges levelled against Mubarak and his two sons.

The sons, Alaa and Gamal, both arrived at the court on Saturday ahead of the verdict, along with co-accused former interior minister Habib al-Adly, a government spokesman told AFP.

If acquitted, Mubarak would not be released because he is serving a three-year sentence in a separate corruption case, a judicial official said.

Saturday’s verdict comes as the revolutionary fervour that unseated Mubarak has largely ebbed across the country.

Mubarak’s Islamist successor Mohamed Morsi was himself removed last year by then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is now president, and put on trial along with hundreds of other Islamists.

Morsi and several top leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood movement are accused of committing acts of violence during the anti-Mubarak uprising as well as during huge anti-Morsi protests which prompted the army to remove him.

– Crackdown –

Several top left-leaning youth activists who led the campaign against Mubarak have also been jailed by the authorities for staging unauthorised protests after the June 2013 overthrow of the divisive Morsi.

Sisi, who won a presidential election in May after crushing his Islamist opponents, has made law and order and economic stability his top priorities rather than democratic freedoms — the key demand during the anti-Mubarak uprising.