Egyptian Court Removes Last Bar to Setting Mubarak Free CAIRO - An Egyptian court on Wednesday ordered former President Hosni Mubarak released from prison, saying all appeals by prosecutors to keep him behind bars had been exhausted. Some accounts said his freedom could come within hours. The former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a court appearance in April. An official in the office of his lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, confirmed that the firm expected Mr. Mubarak, 85, would be released from prison by Thursday. Al Ahram, the state newspaper, said on its Web site Wednesday afternoon that his release may be more imminent, quoting an unidentified judicial source. Other reports claimed the prosecution would still have 48 hours to appeal his release. Even some of Mr. Mubarak's opponents expected his release. "We are now facing a sound release order, and the prosecution will appeal and the appeal will be denied and he will walk out, and he has a right to do so," said Khaled Abu Bakr, a prominent lawyer involved in the cases of protesters killed during the protests against Mr. Mubarak that preceded his downfall more than two years ago. A judicial source told The New York Times that all appeals had been exhausted "and procedures for his release will begin to be processed right away unless he's detained pending other trials." Wednesday's order, however, applied to the last of at least three prosecutions that Mr. Mubarak still faced. He had already been ordered freed pending trial on two other cases, including a retrial on charges of complicity in the deaths of 800 protesters at the end of his regime in January 2011. Mr. Mubarak's release would inject a volatile new element into the political crisis convulsing Egypt, coming less than two months after the military ousted his successor, the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president. The juxtaposition of freedom for Mr. Mubarak while Mr. Morsi remains in custody would dramatically test the level of support for the military-led government among the many anti-Mubarak people who later sided with the decision to depose Mr. Morsi and crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Reached by telephone and told that Mr. Mubarak's release now looked imminent, Ahmed Maher, the founder of the 6th of April youth group that helped start the revolution, was initially silent for several moments. "I'm shocked," he said. But he said he saw no likelihood of street protests if Mr. Mubarak were freed, because opponents of the military-appointed government had been cowed into silence by widespread killings and arrests. "If anybody even thinks of objecting, they will suffer," he said. If anybody dares express opposition against the government or the president or the military, they'll be accused of treason and called a Muslim Brother in hiding. In Cairo's Tahrir Square,where protesters once hung banners and nooses demanding Mr. Mubarak's execution, public opinion appeared to have moved on. No one seemed to care much about Mr. Mubarak's release. The only ones who did appeared to be groups of Western journalists looking for reactions. There was more concern from the Tamarod movement, the organization that ran a petition drive calling for Mr. Morsi's ouster and calling for the June 30 demonstrations that led the military to depose him. The group blamed Mr. Morsi for not having more aggressively prosecuted Mr. Mubarak and his subordinates for the deaths of protesters, and it called on the military-appointed government that replaced Mr. Morsi to use its emergency powers to continue to detain Mr. Mubarak. The revolution, Tamarod's statement said, "will not stand by watching the murderers of martyrs get acquittals." It was still possible that the prosecutors would find another reason to keep Mr. Mubarak incarcerated. Under the martial law rule the military-appointed government has declared, suspending judicial protections, it has the legal tools to do whatever it wants to do with suspects in detention. Indications were that prosecutors were not going to aggressively pursue Mr. Mubarak's continued detention. David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting.