Let Mubarak go

The overthrow of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s dictatorship in Tunisia and fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt led almost immediately to calls for both men to be brought to justice. One of the first acts of the new Tunisian government was to issue an arrest warrant for Ben Ali, his wife Leila Trabelsi, and a number of members of their immediate family. It then asked Interpol to pressure Saudi Arabia to stop giving them sanctuary and turn them over to the Tunisian authorities. Mubarak has not suffered a similar fate — not so far, anyway — but already the Egyptian authorities have arrested three ex-ministers, as well as steel magnate Ahmed Ezz, on corruption charges. It is unlikely that this will be enough to satisfy those who took to the streets in Cairo and Alexandria to demand that the tyrant give up power.

Their determination should come as no surprise. The deep roots of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt may be economic, but the calls in the street were for democracy and human rights. It may have taken awhile for the notion of international justice to arrive in the Arab world, but that it did was inevitable — it is the signature achievement of the human rights movement over the past 30 years.

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