CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt's ex-president Hosni Mubarak was wheeled into court on a stretcher on Wednesday and denied murder and graft charges, as sporadic clashes erupted outside between his supporters and his foes.

The former strongman, looking pale and dressed in white, pleaded not guilty from a metal-barred cage to the premeditated murder of protesters who took to the streets to topple his regime in an uprising that erupted on January 25.

He and his sons Alaa and Gamal also denied all corruption charges.

After a four-hour hearing — the former strongman's first public appearance since he resigned on February 11 — the trial of the Mubaraks was adjourned until August 15.

Former interior minister Habib al-Adly and six of his deputies were also in the dock in the same case, and they are due in court again on Thursday.

Judge Ahmed Refaat, presiding over the Cairo Criminal Court, said Mubarak would be staying at the International Medical Centre, a hospital on the outskirts of Cairo, until the next hearing.

In response to a request by the defence team, Refaat agreed to allow an oncologist to follow up on Mubarak's health during his hospital stay.

Alaa and Gamal seemed composed throughout the hearing and appeared to take turns to shield their ailing father from the television cameras, leaning down regularly to talk to him.

The trial of Mubarak, whose spectacular downfall sent shockwaves across the region, was a key demand of the uprising.

One civil society lawyer called for Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and Mubarak's long-time defence minister, to appear as a witness in the trial.

Lawyers jostled for microphones during the hearing that was for the most part conducted in an orderly manner.

However, outside the courtroom clashes erupted between loyalists and foes of the former president, with several people injured.

Pro-Mubarak protesters carried pictures of him, while his opponents held up posters of the former president behind a noose, and security forces stepped in repeatedly to separate both sides.

The crowd, including families of victims killed during the uprising, had been watching the trial on a large screen outside the Police Academy — once called the Mubarak Police Academy.

Judge Refaat last week vowed a speedy trial and said that the sessions would be held on consecutive days.

Until the last minute, it was widely believed Mubarak would not show up, or that the trial would open and then be adjourned indefinitely.

The hearing has gripped the nation, and Cairo's usually bustling streets were abnormally quiet during the proceedings.

Mubarak, 83, was flown to the capital earlier from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where he had been in custody in hospital being treated for a heart condition.

Security was tight, with barbed wire outside the Police Academy and more than a dozen riot police trucks securing the entrances, an AFP reporter said.

The trial is being held in an auditorium fitted with a large black cage to hold the defendants, including Adly on whom Mubarak relied to quell the revolt, and six police chiefs.

Businessman Hussein Salem, a close associate of the Mubaraks, is being tried in absentia.

The defendants are accused of stealing millions of dollars from the state and ordering the killing of anti-regime protesters during the uprising.

More than 1,000 police and soldiers secured the complex and vetted some 600 lawyers and journalists.

Mubarak will also face some relatives of the victims killed during the revolt, allegedly on his orders.

For weeks, it seemed likely that Mubarak, who doctors say refused to leave his hospital bed, would be tried in Sharm el-Sheikh, but the justice ministry announced last week the trial would be held in Cairo.

His lawyer Farid al-Deeb claimed that Mubarak suffers from cancer and went into a coma last month, which the hospital denied.

One of his doctors told AFP the ex-president was stable, but extremely depressed and weak after refusing food for several days.

Deeb's announcements appear to have been intended to increase sympathy for Mubarak and spare him the indignity of appearing in the defendants' cage.

But the military, which assumed power after Mubarak's resignation, is keen to prove it harbours no lingering loyalties to the former president.

The trial is the latest in a string of legal proceedings against Mubarak-era officials.

Several ministers have already been given jail terms in corruption cases, including Adly, already sentenced to 12 years for graft.

Mubarak is the second Arab leader to be overthrown in the unrest that has swept North Africa and the Middle East since the beginning of this year, after Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

On Tuesday, international rights groups urged a “fair and transparent” trial.

“This trial presents a historic opportunity for Egypt to hold a former leader and his inner circle to account for crimes committed during their rule,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: “If these proceedings scrupulously reflect the international fair trial standards, it will embody a clean break with the record of impunity that characterised Hosni Mubarak's rule, contribute to a new and hopeful chapter in Egypt's history, and set an important regional precedent.”

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Liberia is Africa's oldest republic, but it became better known in the 1990s for its long-running, ruinous civil war and its role in a rebellion in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Although founded by freed American and Caribbean slaves, Liberia is mostly made up of indigenous Africans, with the slaves' descendants comprising 5% of the population.

The West African nation was relatively calm until 1980 when William Tolbert was overthrown by Sergeant Samuel Doe after food price riots. The coup marked the end of dominance by the minority Americo-Liberians, who had ruled since independence, but heralded a period of instability.

By the late 1980s, arbitrary rule and economic collapse culminated in civil war when Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) militia overran much of the countryside, entering the capital in 1990. Mr Doe was executed.

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At a glance

Politics: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became president in 2006 after the first polls since the end of the civil war

Economy: The infrastructure is in ruins. The UN voted to lift a ban on diamond exports, which fuelled the civil war, in April 2007. A ban on timber exports was lifted in 2006

International: 15,000 UN peacekeepers are in place; ex-president Charles Taylor is on trial in The Hague for alleged war crimes for supporting rebels in Sierra Leone; Liberian refugees are scattered across the region

Fighting intensified as the rebels splintered and battled each other, the Liberian army and West African peacekeepers. In 1995 a peace agreement was signed, leading to the election of Mr Taylor as president.

The respite was brief, with anti-government fighting breaking out in the north in 1999. Mr Taylor accused Guinea of supporting the rebellion. Meanwhile Ghana, Nigeria and others accused Mr Taylor of backing rebels in Sierra Leone.

Matters came to a head in 2003 when Mr Taylor – under international pressure to quit and hemmed in by rebels – stepped down and went into exile in Nigeria. A transitional government steered the country towards elections in 2005.

Around 250,000 people were killed in Liberia's civil war and many thousands more fled the fighting. The conflict left the country in economic ruin and overrun with weapons. The capital remains without mains electricity and running water. Corruption is rife and unemployment and illiteracy are endemic.

The UN maintains some 15,000 soldiers in Liberia. It is one of the organisation's most expensive peacekeeping operations.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands – As Libyan rebels claim to be closing in on Moammar Gadhafi, human rights activists are urging them to turn the Libyan dictator over to the International Criminal Court for trial and not mete out justice themselves.

Leading the calls is the court’s Argentine prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who has charged Gadhafi along with his son Seif al-Islam and the regime’s intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Sanoussi with unleashing a campaign of murder and torture since February that aimed to wipe out anti-government protests.

“The law says there’s an arrest warrant pending and according to a Security Council resolution Libya has the obligation to cooperate with the court,” Moreno-Ocampo told reporters at the court.

Rebels have sent mixed signals about what they will do with Gadhafi if they catch him, saying they will cooperate with the ICC but holding open the prospect of trying him in a Libyan court.

Many people in Libya want to see Gadhafi and the members of his family and regime prosecuted at home for abuses throughout his 42-year rule rather than being sent to the Hague to face justice for crimes committed only in the last six months as he fought desperately to cling to power.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday also urged top diplomats meeting Libyan rebels in Paris on Thursday to push for Gadhafi’s surrender to The Hague-based international court if he is captured.

Amnesty International echoed the call, saying Libya’s rebel National Transitional Council is not yet in a position to put Gadhafi on trial as it seeks to restore order to the North African nation ravaged by civil war.

David Nichols, a senior analyst for Amnesty in Brussels, said rebels must hand over Gadhafi “for the sheer reason that the interim government in Libya will not have the capacity, will not have the experience … to try these people fairly and in full compliance with international law.”

Meanwhile, Ali Tarhouni, deputy head of the National Transitional Council, said rebels were homing in on the fugitive dictator.

“Gadhafi is now fleeing — and we have a good idea where he is,” Tarhouni said Tuesday, without elaborating. “We don’t have any doubt that we will catch him.”

Like all international tribunals, the court has no police force of its own to arrest suspects. Moreno-Ocampo says whoever finds the three suspects he has indicted is bound by international law to send them to The Hague.

If rebels still want to prosecute the suspects, they will have to convince judges at the court that they are investigating them and can stage a fair trial.

Under the ICC’s founding statute, it can only take on cases where a country is unwilling or unable to prosecute suspects.

“To date, I don’t know of any other arrest warrants against Gadhafi, so if they arrest Gadhafi, legally the only thing they can do is send him to The Hague,” Moreno-Ocampo said. “If they have a different case in Libya they have to submit this issue to judges and judges will decide.”

Nichols said the international community should use Thursday’s meeting in Paris with Libyan rebel leaders to press for the indicted suspects to be turned over.

“There has not been enough strong EU pressure on the (rebels) to make sure that all those who have been indicted by the ICC are actually transferred to The Hague,” he said.

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Mike Corder can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/mikecorder

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