An Egyptian court on Monday ruled that former president Hosni Mubarak's two sons could be released from prison while awaiting an appeal for a case involving the theft of state funds, judicial sources said.
The case concerns charges that Mubarak and his sons Alaa and Gamal embezzled millions of dollars of state funds, using money intended to upgrade presidential palaces to instead renovate private family residencies.
Alaa and Gamal Mubarak were sentenced along with their 87-year-old father, who was toppled in a popular uprising in 2011 and now resides in a Cairo military hospital, to three years in prison in a re-trial of the case last May.
Gamal, a former investment banker and once a leading figure in Hosni Mubarak's now-dissolved National Democratic Party , was widely expected to succeed his father as president before the 2011 revolt.