August 3, 2011, will be remembered as a historic day in Egypt. Former President Hosni Mubarak was put on public trial, together with his two sons and his ex-interior minister, General Habib el-Adly. The repercussions for Egypt, indeed for the entire Arab world, will be profound.
This is not the first time that an Arab dictator has been put on trial. Former Presidents Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia preceded Mubarak in the dock. Hussein was tried with the help of a United States-led coalition; Ben Ali was tried and convicted in absentia, after fleeing to Saudi Arabia. But in Egypt, "It was done exclusively by Egyptians for Egypt," as a friend put it to me. "That is why we are so proud of it."
The runup to the trial was contentious. On July 29, many organizations staged a large protest in Cairo's Tahrir to highlight the unity of Egypt's revolutionaries (whose demands included a public trial of Mubarak). Instead, the protest exposed the dramatic polarization between Islamists and secularists since Mubarak's ouster.