Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak has been sentenced to three years in prison and fined after a court in Cairo found him guilty of corruption.

The verdict came on Saturday morning in the retrial of the 87-year-old autocrat. His sons, Gamal and Alaa, were also given jail terms in the same case, in which they were accused of embezzling state funds intended for the renovation of presidential palaces.

After three decades of authoritarian rule, Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February 2011. Following the revolt, he was placed on trial in several cases concerning corruption and the deaths of demonstrators in the uprising.

Saturday’s ruling was the latest development in a long and complex series of trials facing the former leader, who remains in a military hospital in Cairo.

The corruption case, dubbed by the Egyptian media as the “presidential palaces” affair, concerns claims that Mubarak and his two sons embezzled millions of pounds worth of state funds over the course of a decade.

The funds were meant to pay for renovating and maintaining presidential palaces but prosecutors said instead 125 million Egyptian pounds (£10.5m) were spent on the construction of private villas for Mubarak’s sons.

Mubarak was first convicted on the charges in 2014, two years after he was jailed for life for complicity in the murder of 800 anti-regime protesters during the 2011 uprising .

But last November, a judge threw out the murder case, and in January the embezzlement case against him and his sons, Alaa and Gamal, was overturned and sent to retrial.

In the four years of turmoil since the uprising, Egypt’s courts have emerged as a focal and unpredictable player in the ongoing political drama. The judiciary fiercely proclaims its independence from the executive, though many judges rule in support of Egypt’s security state.

“The vagaries of the Egyptian judicial system may mean things change again, but even if they do, what remains clear is that this Egyptian political dispensation is more complicated than simply ‘Mubarak 2.0,’” said HA Hellyer, a fellow at the Brookings Centre for Middle East Policy in Washington and the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Hellyer said: “The sentence isn’t remotely evidence of a new war on corruption – but it does show the loyalties, relationships and power dynamics in 2015 are quite different than 2010.”

Gamal and Alaa Mubarak were released in January after spending nearly four years in prison, but it is unclear if they will be able to claim for the time served.