Stage set for Hosni Mubarak to appear in court (VIDEO)

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is set to appear in an Egyptian courtroom Wednesday where Egypt’s top prosecutor, appointed by Mubarak, will submit charges against him including corruption and ordering the killing of anti-government protesters.

The proceedings will reportedly be broadcast live, stealing attention away from normal Ramadan TV fare, Al Ahram reports.

Meanwhile, a violent crackdown on protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square threatened to overshadow even the trial. Egyptian troops reportedly used electrified clubs and fired shots into the air to end a sit-in by several hundred protesters demanding faster political changes.

Egyptian Interior Minister Mansur Essawi said that the ailing Mubarak, 83, would be transferred from his hospital detention in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to his trial location in order to quell public anger, Egypt's official MENA news agency reports. He is reportedly receiving treatment for a heart condition.

Mubarak — ousted on February 11 February, in the wake of the 18-day uprising that sparked the so-called Arab Spring protests across the Middle East — is due to appear in court along with several of his former associates at a police academy on the outskirts of the capital, Cairo.

His two sons, Alaa and Gamal, former Egyptian Interior Minister Habib al-Adli and six senior policemen are to face charges of ordering the killing of anti-government protesters.

The police and the army will jointly provide secure the unprecedented trial. Essawi on Monday inspected the courtroom, where a cage has been installed for Mubarak, the Gulf News reports.

"We do not want to have tensions in the street if Mubarak didn't attend the trial. We have no interest in keeping him in Sharm el-Sheikh," he added.

The Washington Post points out that with the exception of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, "no other Arab dictator in modern history has been held to account by his own people."

"It’s a decisive moment in the history of the Egyptian people to see this ousted president behind the prosecution cage after seeing him portrayed as a divine figure on television for decades," Mahmoud el-Khodairy, a former judge who is a critic of Mubarak, told the Post. 

Further, it writes:

Many Egyptians have grown weary of the country’s interim military leadership, led by Mubarak’s longtime defense minister, Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, and have voiced doubt in recent months that the trial would go forward.

But the military rulers, under growing public pressure to try Mubarak and others, appear willing to proceed, and judicial and security officials have offered reassurances that the former president and decorated war hero will in fact be tried.