REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, CAIRO -- An Egyptian court has dropped its case against former President Hosni Mubarak over the killing of 239 protesters in the 2011 revolt that ended his three-decade rule. His supporters erupted into celebration when the verdicts of that retrial - which also cleared Mubarak's former interior minister Habib al-Adly and six aides - were read out. The defendants had denied the charges.

Mubarak (86 years) was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for conspiring to murder the demonstrators, sowing chaos and creating a security vacuum during the 18-day revolt, but an appeals court ordered a retrial. Yet, many Egyptians who lived through Mubarak's rule view it as a period of autocracy and crony capitalism and considered it a victory to see him behind bars.

"This is a political verdict. The judiciary has been procrastinating for four years so they could clear him after hope had been lost," the father of Ahmed Khaleefa (19 years), who was killed in 2011, told Reuters outside the court. "The verdict hit us like bullets. I consider that my son Ahmed died today."

Hundreds of people died when security forces clashed with protesters in the weeks before Mubarak was forced from power in February 2011. Othman al-Hefnawy, a lawyer representing some of the families of the protesters who died, said the verdict left open the question: if Mubarak, his interior minister and their security aides were not responsible for the deaths of 239 protesters, then who was?