CAIRO, Egypt - In June of 2012, Egypt held its breath in anticipation of the court verdict against former President Hosni Mubarak, toppled by a revolution in which hundreds died at the hands of the security forces. 

They crowded around TV sets in coffee shops and cheered when the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 25 years in prison. But demonstrators also poured into streets across the country with many wanting to see the former autocratic leader sentenced to death instead.

What a difference 10 months makes. Ahead of his retrial on Saturday, social media was virtually silent on the subject and newspaper coverage was scant.

On the streets of Cairo, nine months of rule by Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, rising crime and a sputtering economy have led some to conclude that the revolution’s treatment of the former leader was too harsh.

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“Even if Mubarak was bad, I don’t like my president to be in prison like this. He shouldn’t be treated the way he was after the revolution,” café owner Abdel Nabi al Shaer, 48, said.  “We should remember the good things, living in peace for 30 years. I don’t have to remember the bad.”  

A journalist who asked that her name not be used, went even further. “I would like to tell Mubarak we are sorry,” she said.

Mubarak, a staunch ally of the United States, was charged as an accessory to murder for failing to stop the killing of more than 800 people during the January 25 Revolution, as the movement that toppled him became known.

A thief or a job creator?
He was the first ruler overthrown by the Arab Spring movements to stand trial in person, appearing in court in a hospital bed. After his sentence, Mubarak challenged the ruling and a retrial was ordered in January.

Mubarak, now 84,  is also being investigated for squandering public funds. His sons, Gamal and Alaa, face retrial on charges of financial corruption.

One of Mubarak's lawyers, Yousri Abdul Razak, said he was confident his client would be cleared.

"President Mubarak asked for the police to show patience to the protesters," he said, adding that there was no evidence that Mubarak asked security forces to put down the demonstrations. 

Florist Khalid Ramadan agreed Mubarak should be set free.

“Now I can’t walk with my children on the street,” the 30-year-old said. “Since Morsi took over I haven’t had any work. Hosni was a thief but there was work. I have three kids and I can’t feed them.”

But anger toward Mubarak remains. Fruit seller Mohamed Abded Hamid said he thought the former leader deserved the ultimate punishment.

“I hope [Mubarak] will get the death sentence because [he] oppressed a lot of people,” he said. “If they [the Mubarak regime] hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been demonstrations in the first place.”

University student David Azer poured scorn on Mubarak and Morsi equally.

“I am not paying attention and am fed up because Morsi is doing nothing. He is not the president we want. Mubarak should be imprisoned for life because he did a lot of bad things.” 

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News analysis

CAIRO – A court order to suspend parliamentary elections has been welcomed as a victory for the rule of law in Egypt and a rebuff to recent power grabs by the country’s president, Mohamed Morsi.

The Egyptian Administrative Court ruled Wednesday that elections for a lower house of parliament, scheduled to begin April 22, should be indefinitely postponed. By doing so, they overturned an earlier presidential decree, undermining Morsi's political authority.

The court claims that the Shura Council, which bears legislative powers until a lower house is elected and instituted, made amendments to election law and sent it to the president's office without clearing them with the court.

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Political uncertainty and unrest have gripped Egypt for months, as economic difficulties compound public concern that Morsi, a figurehead of the Muslim Brotherhood, is taking the country increasingly toward Islamic rule.

Opposition groups, represented by the National Salvation Front, welcomed the court’s decision.  They had already planned to boycott the elections, calling them anti-democratic and accusing them of being biased in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).

"We have succeeded in halting elections in order to correct the constitutional shame that has struck our constitution ever since new articles were added without being presented to the constitutional court," Ahmed Mahran, a law professor and Director of the Cairo Centre for Political and Legal Studies, said in a statement. 

Mahran said he believed the Shura Council and the presidency had to be kept in check by the power of Egypt's judicial law.

"Those who presume to respect the law, constitution, and judiciary decisions must prove the truth of their allegations," he added.

“To those who think of Egypt as their estate: We will protect Egypt from the pretenders and their perfidy, and continue to confront political thuggery with the law…”

Wednesday’s ruling can be appealed, but the FJP has already indicated it will accept the decision – a move that left many experts questioning whether the group had a change of heart.

Political commentator and publisher Hisham Kassem believes Morsi has been forced to abide by the court's decision in order to save his own future.

Kassem said the president has been raising the political stakes “until it backfired and put him in a corner and it looks like he is going to pay the price for his previous mistakes.”

He added: "Today's newspaper headline reads, 'The Court halts parliamentary election and the presidency respects the process.'  That should not be a headline." 

In other words, Kassem believes Morsi wouldn’t ordinarily respect rule of law – unless, as he said earlier, it’s to Morsi's benefit.  

But some think Morsi’s acquiescence to the court ruling is linked to his meeting last week with Secretary of State John Kerry.

"John Kerry…didn't come [to Egypt] to vacation…but to tap [Morsi] on the head and say 'get your act together, make concessions to the competition, this is not the environment for free and fair elections,'" said Mona Makram Ebeid, a political science professor, Coptic Christian and member of the Shura Council.

"We are still very dependent on the U.S. so I think this was the real message. It came the day after Kerry left," Ebeid added.

But Kassem thinks U.S. leverage is not enough to bail Morsi out of Egypt's growing economic and political quagmire.

"Kerry did speak to him about having to abide by political consensus,” he said. “I do not know whether it had impact, but at this point Morsi is damned, nobody can save him."

NBC News' Charlene Gubash contributed to this report.

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In the days since Mohamed Morsi was named president-elect of Egypt, two narratives have emerged about the 60-year-old engineer.

The first paints Morsi as an anti-American, anti-woman, anti-Christian and anti-Israel enforcer for the Muslim Brotherhood who will, despite his claims, turn back the clock in Egypt.

The second narrative, supported by two engineering professors from Egypt who knew Morsi when he was an engineering student and professor in California for seven years from 1978 to 1985, depicts a quiet, hardworking young man more driven by studies than politics.

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Professor Nagi El Naga, who knew Morsi as an assistant professor in engineering at California State University Northridge, described his former colleague as kind, open-minded and conservative. At the time, Morsi was 30, with a wife and two young, U.S.-born children. His wife covered her hair with a veil; El Naga’s wife, a professor, did not.

“He was somewhat more conservative than me as far as religion, but there’s a difference between being conservative and being extremist,” said El Naga, who still teaches at Northridge. “He was open-minded. We had differences but these differences never prevented us from sharing dinner and things like that.

“He was not irrational,” El Naga continued. “He was sincere in what he believed in.”

Morsi has been described as the accidental candidate; in April, he replaced Khairat El-Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood’s more charismatic and effusive choice who was deemed ineligible to run. Morsi became the chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party, a group with ties to the Brotherhood that emerged after the 2011 revolution. He was an independent member of parliament from 2000 to 2005.

Egypt's Morsi goes from prisoner to president

He won the election with 51 percent of the vote, edging out Ahmed Shafiq, who was viewed as an extension of former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Mubarak resigned in February of 2011 after 30 years in control.  

Affable, hardworking
Professor Farghalli Mohamed of University of California said he was surprised to see his former graduate student join the Muslim Brotherhood. He said Morsi prayed five times a day and observed Ramadan, but did not discuss religion or politics, nor did he grow a light beard, as did the more devout Muslim students.

Rather, Mohamed remembers Morsi as an affable, hardworking and unmarried young man who joined his family at their home and on outings to the Magic Mountain amusement park.

Beaten candidate, under graft probe, leaves Egypt

“I saw students from the Middle East at the time whose views were very conservative, who didn’t like what they saw in America in terms of social values -- they didn’t like the dress code of women,” Mohamed said. “When you visit them in their house, they are very conservative. Usually you don’t see their wives. But Mohamed Morsi, he met with my wife, and my wife doesn’t (wear a veil).”

In 1985, Morsi traveled to Egypt and never returned to California.

El Naga and Mohamed, who have lost touch with Morsi, have differing theories on why Egypt's president-elect joined the Brotherhood.

Mohamed believes Morsi would not have joined the Brotherhood had he returned to Cairo to teach, rather than taking a position at a small university in the more conservative northern part of Egypt.

El Naga, however, believes that Morsi joined the Brotherhood because he shared one of their values: to fight corruption in the Mubarak regime.   

Morsi quits Muslim Brotherhood after election

When El Naga heard Morsi speak on Sunday, he said he believed the new president’s claims that he would unify the country.

“When I saw him talking it brought me back to many years back,” El Naga said. “I felt he was the same person I was with 30 years ago.”

Mohamed was less enthusiastic.

“I feel sad for Morsi,” he said. “He was elected as president -- that is great -- but at the moment it is vague for him. He has no constitution on which to rely on to govern the country. There is no Congress, and then the military council is still in control.”

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