Saudi Arabia offered to pay US$4 billion in exchange for Hosni Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Guide Khairat al-Shater said at dinner with 300 families in the Helwan district on Wednesday.
“It was up to the whole of the Egyptian people to accept,” he said. “But the amount was too small.”
The former president is awaiting a verdict, scheduled for 2 June, over charges of ordering the killing of peaceful demonstrators during the January 2011 uprising that forced him to step down.
Supporters of the revolution believe Saudi Arabia worked to undermine the uprising because Mubarak was its closest ally in the region and it feared the revolution could affect other Arab regimes.
Saudi Arabia has hosted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali since he fled in the wake of a popular uprising against his rule at the end of last year. It provided medical treatment to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh when he suffered burns from a bomb attack on Yemen's presidential palace during a popular uprising against his rule in the same year. It also participated in a military intervention suppressing an uprising in Bahrain that demanded political reforms.
The Saudi ambassador to Cairo, Ahmed Al Qattan, said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia ended its relationship with Mubarak when he stepped down on 11 February 2011, denying an attempt to host him or provide medical treatment for him in Tabuk.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
