A Cairo court sentenced Egypt's deposed president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons to three years in prison on corruption charges on Saturday.

If the sentence withstands an appeal, it would officially establish Mubarak as a convicted criminal years after the 2011 popular uprising that toppled him.

The case, dubbed the "presidential palaces" affair by the Egyptian media, was a retrial in which Mubarak and his sons were charged with embezzling millions of dollars of state funds over the course of a decade, diverting money meant to pay for maintaining presidential palaces and upgrading their private residences.