Cairo: Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak was wheeled into court on a stretcher as his trial for the deaths of protesters resumed on Monday, live footage broadcast by state television showed.
Mubarak, 83, is being treated in a military hospital for a heart condition between sessions of the trial.
He faces execution if he is convicted of ordering the killings of protesters during the uprising that overthrew him in February.
The trial resumed last week after a three month hiatus that saw the country's first parliamentary election since his ouster and a spike in deadly protests against the generals who took charge after his overthrow.
The court is set to hold daily sessions after criticism that it is allegedly delaying the trial.
The court, being held at the Police Academy on the outskirts of Cairo, said on Monday it would allocate the next three days for hearing prosecutors and lawyers in the high-profile trial that began on August 3 amid public and media frenzy.
During a short session on Monday, the court was told that a technical investigation concluded it was impossible to retrieve damaged video recordings belonging to state television related to the protests that eventually forced Mubarak to step down last February.
Cairo’s Attorney General Mustafa Sulaiman also told the court that all victims of a police crackdown during the 18-day protests had been killed or injured in public squares, not during attacks on security buildings.
During the break, lawyers for Mubarak's alleged victims had tried to dismiss chief judge Ahmad Refaat, whom they accused of bias towards the defence, but failed.
Mubarak, also charged with corruption, shares the defendants' cage with his former interior minister Habib Al Adly, six former security chiefs and his two sons Alaa and Gamal, who face graft charges.
The hearings began on August 3 after months of protests to pressure the military rulers to place the strongman, who ruled for three decades, on trial along with former regime officials.
But relatives of his alleged victims say their hopes to see him sentenced have been dashed by a string of prosecution witnesses who mostly confirmed the defence's case that Mubarak never gave orders to shoot protesters.
The most senior witness, a former assistant to the interior minister, said that Adly had ordered police to use tear gas and water cannon against protesters during the most violent day of protests on January 28.
Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's former defence minister who is now the country's military ruler, testified in camera. The court issued a gag order on his testimony, but lawyers say he did not incriminate Mubarak.
Trial picks up pace
The court on Monday ignored a request by lawyers to release Mubarak on health grounds.
Wearing eyeglasses, Mubarak appeared at the session while lying on a hospital bed. Since August, he has been staying under arrest at an army medical centre near Cairo.
Although no violence occurred on Monday outside the court building, families of the people killed in the anti-Mubarak uprising protested against what they called an unjustifiably slow pace of the trial.
They were worried that the defendants would be eventually acquitted after another Cairo court last week cleared policemen of killing five protesters and injuring six others.
Angry relatives of victims threatened to take the law into their hands and kill Mubarak and other defendants if the court ruled they were not guilty.
They chanted “Death for the killers” as they raised photos of the slain protesters with posters reading “The martyr tells his country I want my right”.
With input from AFP
