Lying on a hospital bed behind metal bars in a Cairo courtroom, Hosni Mubarak, the ousted Egyptian president, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and corruption at the start of a trial that few of his countrymen could have imagined only a year ago.
Looking gaunt but alert, the 83-year-old former president, appearing in public for the first time since he stepped down on February 11, spoke only once into a court microphone to enter his plea saying that he “totally denied all the charges”.
Mr Mubarak was wheeled into the courtroom in his hospital bed after arriving in Cairo aboard an air ambulance, which brought him from the hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he has been held.