Ashraf Khalil

On Wednesday, an Egyptian court ordered that former president Hosni Mubarak be freed from prison. It’s the latest piece to of Egypt’s post-revolution political order to fall, after a military coup earlier this summer ousted Pres. Mohammed Morsi from office and led to a crackdown on protesters that has left some 1,000 Morsi supporters dead. Ashraf Khalil, Cairo-based correspondent for the Times of London, Foreign Policy, and other publications and author of  Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation, and Charles Levinson, Middle East Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, fill us in on the latest from Egypt.

Ashraf Khalil joined us in January 2011, as protesters filled Tahrir Square. On today’s Backstory, he updates us on how Egypt’s democracy has taken shape, the growing power struggle between the country’s military and its democratically elected officials, and the mixed messages of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit there earlier this week. Ashraf Khalil is the author of Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation.

So far the renewed protests have remained peaceful, notes Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development, University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He helps wade through the news coming out of Egypt and says that clearly the Mubarak regime is not to be trusted.

It's day eleven of Egypt's populast uprising. What began with relatively peaceful demonstrations turned into a standoff between anti-regime protesters and the Egyptian military. Thursday saw a turn for the worse, as violent Mubarak supporters joined the fray bringing with with them clubs, straight razors and Molotov cocktails.

Earlier this week, people took to the streets of Cairo, protesting the government of President Hosni Mubarak. On today’s Backstory, Human Rights Watch researcher Heba Morayef and Ashraf Khalil, a Cairo-based journalist who has been covering the protests for Foreign Policy, discuss how Mubarak came to power and how he’s maintained control of Egypt over the last 29 years. Plus, we’ll get an update on one of the largest protests that the country has seen in more than 30 years.