Mohamed Muslemany/ NBC News

Egyptians in Cairo's Tahrir Square cheer the news that former President Hosni Mubarak has been detained while his alleged crimes are investigated on Wednesday.

CAIRO – Hours after it was announced that Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons Alaa and Gamal had been detained, an animated crowd gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to discuss the news.

Mubarak, swept out after nearly 30 years in power by an 18-day people’s revolt, is being detained in a Sharm el-Sheikh hospital while he is investigated on accusations of corruption and abuse of authority. Investigators are looking into the killing of protesters during the popular uprising, the embezzlement of public funds and abuse of power. His sons are also being held in Tora Prison near a suburb of Cairo. They have all denied any wrongdoing. 

Abdullah Gad, a government employee, said he came every Friday to protest during the revolution. He was so happy when he woke up to the news of Mubarak’s detention that he hopped on a train and traveled two hours to Tahrir Square. His wife, a teacher, left work to celebrate with family. 

“I am very, very happy,” said Gad. “The best thing is that his sons went [to jail] before him because they are the reason for the destruction of this country.” He added: “I hope he is sentenced to death… He was no good. He killed people.”

Those comments were echoed by others in the square.

“I am so happy. It’s like a dream,” said a member of the Youth for Change group who wanted to remain anonymous. “We never expected this. We were only insisting that the regime be changed. The process should move quickly so that we can regain stability and prove that the military is serious about the process.”

Mohamed Abdel Rahman works in the oil sector and believes that Mubarak lined his pockets with profits from the industry.

“We used to pray we would not find oil because the profits went to foreign oil companies and the price of oil and gas was kept low. The money from the Suez Canal, oil and gas, gold mines was transferred to the presidency,” said Abdel Rahman. “The occupation of Egypt for 300 years did not top what Mubarak did in 30. He managed to destroy national unity.”

“Mubarak can’t fool the people” said Mahmoud Shahin, a public relations director, who thinks the former president is faking illness to avoid incarceration. “If the doctors say he is sick, we will know they are collaborating with him.” 

Sabry, who didn’t give his last name, applauded the detentions but warned that the focus on imprisoning ex-officials while allowing the economy to flounder would only hurt the majority. “They will keep arresting one after another. Who will remain? There is nothing left, no work, no food for the kids. I have nothing! After ten years everybody will be arrested and there will be five million without food.”

A show of hands among the 20 bystanders who had gathered to discuss Mubarak with this reporter showed the vast majority in support of the death penalty. 

One lone voice, a sweet-faced university student, spoke up for the former leader.

“Mubarak must be innocent because he never fled Egypt,” he reasoned.
 
A half-mile away, a small demonstration of about 30 people rallied for Mubarak’s innocence in front of the Egyptian state television building.

“The people want the freedom of the president,” they chanted, protesting Mubarak’s detention.  

“He was our president for 30 years. We should first look at the good he has done. There was a conspiracy against him,” a young woman with tears in her eyes defiantly insisted.

“We lived in security when he was there,” said housewife Faten Awa. She blamed a recent rise in crime on Mubarak’s absence. “My house has been robbed. Cars are being stolen, girls are being raped, they have allowed the thugs on us. We want the president back.”

But Ahmed Maher, a leader of the April 6 opposition movement that helped engineer the revolution who was reached by phone, saw the judicial decision as a validation and a warning to other Arab despots.

“We were living for this moment, and because of the arrests and oppression we faced, we knew this day was coming. This is a great message to other leaders. They should know if the revolution starts, nothing will stop it.”  

Related link: NBC's Richard Engel answers readers questions about the Middle East

Carsten Koall / Getty Images Contributor

Huge crowds gather in Tahrir Square to celebrate former President Hosni Mubarak's ouster and call on Egypt's military rulers to speed up reforms and their crackdown on corruption.

CAIRO – If people vote with their feet, then the millions of Egyptians who crowded into Tahrir Square on Friday were expressing their unadulterated joy at the success of their popular revolt. 

Most people feel that rampant corruption under former President Hosni Mubarak stunted Egypt's human and economic potential, so now they look forward to what they believe will be better days once the country purges remnants of the old regime.

There is tremendous pressure on the military to bring the most flagrant profiteers of Mubarak’s regime to justice. Thursday night, police rounded up three top ministers, as well as steel tycoon and Mubarak crony, Ahmed Ezz, possibly Egypt's most hated man. 
YouTube video showed three of the men led into Cairo’s Tora Prison in handcuffs.

Analysts think the arrests, on the eve of Cairo's "Victory Day" demonstration, the largest gathering in Cairo so far, were meant to placate protesters' hunger for reform.

But those who worked hardest for Mubarak's overthrow want a clean sweep.

Long list of demands
The planners of the revolution, as well as the leadership council of the 25th of January Revolution, insist that the protests continue until emergency law is lifted, political prisoners are released, ministers who served under Mubarak are purged from the government and a provisional civilian government is set up alongside the provisional military government.

Few doubt the military's will to hold elections on schedule, but many worry that they are seeing too many old faces in the government and on the council for constitutional reform – and no representatives of the January 25th movement. Feminists complain that half the Egyptian population – women – have been excluded from the council that will determine constitutional amendments. 

Secularists are also fretting about the fact that there is one Muslim Brotherhood member on the council, as well as others who they say are sympathetic to Islamists, but no countervailing secularists, reformists or human rights lawyers.

What’s at stake is Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution which establishes Islamic religious law as the basis of civil law in Egypt. Practically speaking, Islamic civil law allows men easy and unilateral divorce rights, legalizes polygamy and permits sons twice the inheritance of daughters. Egypt's top clerics have already said that Article 2 is off limits and cannot be altered, but reformists insist it must be changed.    

Ben Curtis / AP

Six-month old Shourouk is carried on her mother's shoulders, as tens of thousands of Egyptians gather to pray and celebrate the fall of the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, and to maintain pressure on the current military rulers, in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday.

Meantime, the ecountry remains crippled by closed banks, striking workers, closed schools and higher crime since only half the old police force is back at work. 

But even the challenges have not stifled a pervasive feeling of optimism and hope. Cairo’s drivers honked their support for the hundreds of thousands crowded into central Cairo on Friday. The demonstration was not only a celebration, but a message to the military leadership: ignore us at your peril.

"Of course it's a good thing," affirmed a taxi driver. "We are a rich country. We have tourism, the Suez Canal, oil, gas and industry. Now things will get better."

NBC News' longtime producer in Cairo, Charlene Gubash, answered readers' questions on msnbc.com this morning.

Update 3:49 p.m. ET: Reuters reports that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has spoken to Suleiman today, delivering the message those responsible for violence must be held accountable and reiterating that the transition to a new government has to begin now.

Update 3:16 p.m. ET: Vice President Omar Suleiman has urged demonstrators to go home and observe the curfew, saying he can't negotiate with other political leaders while the demonstrations continue, Egyptian state media report.

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NBC News' Charlene Gubash reports from Cairo that state television is warning all protesters to clear Tahrir Square. 

NBC's Richard Engel reports on Twitter that the protesters are insisting that they will regroup tomorrow even if supporters of President Hosni Mubarak take the square by force.

NBC News’ Producer Charlene Gubash has lived and worked in Egypt for over 20 years. In a Q &A over the phone from Cairo, she explained the mood in the city today and her sense of how the country is on a precipitous tipping point that could go either way.

What is the mood in Cairo today?  
People are already gathering in Tahrir Square today in anticipation of Tuesday’s planned “million-person march.” Hundreds of thousands of people are reportedly already camping out for the night.

President Hosni Mubarak has just named the new Cabinet – but it hasn’t been accepted by anyone because it’s very similar to the old Cabinet. Many names are similar, but the major posts have changed.    

Basically, people are demanding that Mubarak step down and that there is a transitional government – but they obviously don’t want it to include members of the old government.

What to watch next?
A huge portion of the Egyptian population have now joined the young activists who got the protests going – it’s now swollen into a popular movement to bring down Mubarak’s government.

People are no longer afraid of anything. They are no longer afraid of the police, they have found their voice.  And they are going through with this thing until the end – until Mubarak steps down and the government is changed.

That’s what we have to watch out for.

Meantime, the security situation – is bad. It’s so bad that the U.S. Embassy has offered to help Americans to leave Egypt. Out of the tens of thousands of Americans who are here, many of them have taken the U.S. up on their offer and are heading to places nearby like Istanbul and Athens. 

There is also an exodus of Egyptians. One person who has already left is Mubarak’s daughter-in-law. Many other wealthy families – including one of the most reviled people in the country and a prominent person in the government, Ahmed Ezz, – have left. They have flown to various destinations – primarily London. So, a lot of money has presumably flown out of the country, too. And a lot of other business men are trying to get out. 

As someone who has lived in Egypt for over 20 years, are you surprised by how quickly things have changed? Does the speed of recent turn of events seem almost unbelievable?
My sense is that Egypt has entered a new era. This may be the day that people rue actually.

They need to have a transition – a true democratic transition – with a leader like Mohamed ElBaradei around whom the country can coalesce as kind of a progressive, reformist, revered world figure who is well respected by everyone. Or Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, who is also well-respected by a large segment of the population.

Unless they have moderate transition figures and democratic elections where we don’t see an Islamist figure emerge as the leader of the country, then this country may be headed down the path of becoming another Islamic state. I don’t think that’s completely out of the picture.

It’s a very conservative society. There is no real vigorous political or civil life here.  For example, the best organized-party is the Muslim Brotherhood.

People have become increasingly conservative over the years, so there is a fear that if people do vote, they may be swayed to vote for something like the Muslim Brotherhood. 

There is a real concern that Egypt will move away from being what it was – which is an extremely tolerant, Westernized society – to something that is more of an Islamist, conservative society that would be hostile to Israel.

If it went that way, probably one of the first things Islamist leaders would do would be to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel which has been a big demand of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups for years. 

But by the same token, you talk to a lot of people and they do bring up the names of ElBaradei and Moussa as people they would like to see as candidates.

So what I think we have to look for is: what’s going to happen with the government. That’s the million dollar question.

Obviously appointing the former head of intelligence as the vice president was not well received. Unless Mubarak appoints someone like ElBaradei or Moussa to head up the government or as vice president and then resigns so that person can effectively become head of a transitional government, I think that these demonstrations will continue until they force the government to fall.

People are coming out because they feel like unless Mubarak steps down, the bloodshed will continue, the looting will continue, the criminality will continue.

You have to understand this is a place where there was almost no crime. For instance, rape is punishable by death. You could walk on the street at 3 or 4 a.m. and no one would touch you. So people have this feeling of safety all the time here – unlike what you would find almost anywhere else in the world. And now it’s the total opposite of that.

So for people to be subjected to the kind of criminality we saw over the weekend – is completely foreign. It’s a different place. It’s like it lost its innocence. 

How do Egyptians see ElBaradei? As an outsider or do they revere him?
A lot of Egyptians do see him as an outsider. He did two things wrong in Egyptian’s eyes when he recently ran for president. 

When he had the chance to explain his platform, he never really did. He said he didn’t really have a plan of action, he didn’t really have a five-year-plan. He said he was coming to listen – and that wasn’t enough for people, they wanted something concrete. That was just before he returned to Egypt. Then when he did come to Egypt, he left right away and didn’t come back until just now.

I think a lot of Egyptians are wondering, why was he absent so long? Why did he just come back now? Is he being an opportunist? So he really needs to prove himself to people.

Of course, they are immensely proud of him because he is a Nobel laureate, he was head of the IAEA, he stood up to the United States. So he has a lot of credentials, but he does have prove himself as a patriot. 

And Mubarak?
I think he’ll hang on until the bitter end. If he were not going to hang on, one would think he would seen the writing on the wall and have left by now out of concern for the country.

But it’s difficult to say. He’s obviously out of touch. He’s obviously concerned about the stability of the country. And I think in his mind, stability means having a tight grip on things.  

By Charlene Gubash, NBC News Producer

Christophe Ena / AP

Protesters chant slogans against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis, on Friday.

CAIRO –  Four months of rioting brought down one of the most authoritarian leaders in the Arab world, Tunisian President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, Friday. And many – from Arab analysts to average citizens – believe this may mark a turning point in the Arab World.  

After two decades of unaccountable leadership, Tunisians suffered from an increasingly unbearable degree of poverty, unemployment, widespread corruption and injustice at the hands of the powerful state security. On Friday they showed the world they’d had enough. But, unfortunately, their plight is a common one shared by the majority of citizens across the Arab world. 

Many in the region stayed glued to satellite channels Friday watching as Tunisian riot police beat and kicked demonstrators and shot tear gas canisters into crowds. They watched as injured demonstrators were carried away by their colleagues, as the prime minister announced that Ben Ali was no longer in power, and as anchors tried to determine exactly where Ben Ali had fled.

And many viewers outside Tunisia pondered what lessons their leaders took away.

“I think it has made governments around the region aware that uprising and revolution can happen in the world. It is a wake-up call for some. Definitely after what happened in Tunisia, things will not be the same as before,” Gamal Abdel Gawad, senior analyst at the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “There are many similar countries among non-oil producers, with a lack of democracy and a lack of civil institutions. After Tunisia, perhaps, we will be seeing a different Arab world on the side of the government and people.”

Gawad pointed out that the coverage of the government’s overthrow was unprecedented. 

“The last time this happened was in 1985 when the Sudanese overthrew Numeiri and then there was no satellite TV. This is the first upheaval of that sort watched around the clock instantly by everybody in the region, and its impact will be felt.”

A Cairo University political science professor, Dr. Horeya Megahed, agreed. “This might give a lesson to other governments. They might absorb the problems of the people and respond to them.” 

However, Hani Sabah, an Egyptian technician, could not imagine a similar reaction in his own country.

“The oppression the Tunisians faced was so much pressure that it made them explode and do what they did. They suffered from unemployment and high prices,” said Sabah. “But it would be hard for that to happen here with the president and his gang around him…The government’s attitude is: say whatever you want and we will do whatever we want.” 

Sabah doesn’t anticipate a people's rebellion in Egypt. “Everybody wants to change the system, but the government right now is completely protected … They will shoot at [protesters] with live ammunition. If they are planning to overthrow the government, they will finish them off.” 

Aly Ibrahim, a Cairo plumber, was glued to the TV on Friday and surfed channels to catch the latest developments. 

“The Egyptian news broadcast only a fraction of the story for fear people might get the message. Be sure that so many other countries will get the message and will say, ‘These people managed to do that.’ … The message people got is, ‘Enough is enough!’ They see prices rising, problems in society, and nobody is moving a finger.”