An Egyptian court has acquitted a former interior minister who served under Hosni Mubarak of corruption, three years after he was sentenced to 12 years in jail by another court.

A cassation court had ordered the retrial of Habib al-Adly, who had been convicted of money-laundering and illicitly enriching himself.

The charges of which he was acquitted on Thursday were linked to the sale of land owned by him. Adly was acccused of tasking police officials with finding a buyer who would pay the highest possible price.

However, the disgraced ex-minister, who ran Mubarak's security services for more than a decade before a popular uprising overthrew the strongman in 2011, will remain in detention.

In February, a court upheld a three-year jail sentence handed to Adly for taking advantage of his position and forcing police conscripts to work on his private property.

He was also sentenced to life in prison along with Mubarak in 2012 over the kilings of protesters in the 2011 uprising, but a court later overturned the verdict on technical grounds. Adly and Mubarak are now being retried along with six police commanders.