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Cairo - Egypt's public prosecutor ordered on Sunday that ousted President Hosni Mubarak be transferred to a prison hospital in Cairo after a doctor declared him well enough to travel.

Mubarak took refuge in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikhafter a popular uprising ended his 30-year rule. He now faces questioning over corruption and murder allegations.

"The public prosecutor has ordered the Interior Ministry to transfer former President Hosni Mubarak to Mazra'a hospital in Torah prison (in Cairo)" once the hospital is ready to receive him, the prosecutor said in a statement.

Mubarak was admitted to a hospital in Sharm with an unspecified illness the day that prosecutors ordered him detained for questioning and mystery still surrounds his medical condition.

Egypt's ruling military council, which took power when Mubarak stepped aside on February 11, has been under heavy pressure to put the former president on trial.

Mubarak's condition is "stable," prosecutor Abdel Hamid Mahmoud said, citing forensic doctor Ahmed el-Seba'i, and there was nothing to stop him traveling.

The prosecutor said Mubarak should be moved to a military hospital near Cairo while the interior ministry supervises the preparations at the Torah prison hospital.

Those preparations would take at least a month, he said, because the prison hospital needed equipment in its intensive care unit that must function for a month before it can be used on patients.

The ex-president, who was transferred to hospital in Sharm with unspecified heart problems, needs to be under constant medical care because his heart could stop beating "at any moment," the prosecutor cited Seba'i as saying.

Source: Reuters