On January 28, 2011, a former top-ranking military official was leading a massive, authoritarian Egyptian government. Meanwhile, Mohammed Morsi was one of many officials of the banned Muslim Brotherhood who were imprisoned on political charges.

For a brief interlude after popular uprisings brought down Hosni Mubarak, Morsi served as the first democratically elected president of Egypt. But today a former general leads the government, and a court has just sentenced Morsi to 20 years in prison. The Muslim Brotherhood's political party is once again banned, and while Mubarak is still serving time in a military hospital—and it's not clear when he might be released—charges against him have been dismissed and his sons have been let out of jail. In important ways, the revolution that set out to topple Mubarak has taken a 360-degree turn back to where it started.

On January 30, 2011, Morsi escaped from prison, and in June 2012, he was elected president. His tenure was a rocky one—there were protests against him that December 2012 that forced him to flee the presidential palace, and in the summer of 2013 he was arrested by the military and deposed amid further protests. The new government of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, former head of the army, put Morsi on trial, and on Tuesday, the former president was convicted of inciting violence and causing the torture of protestors outside the palace during the 2012 protests. He and 14 co-defendants were, however, acquitted on charges of murder related to the deaths of protestors. The case is an eerie echo of that brought against Mubarak, who was also charged with the deaths of those who protested against his regime—the ones who helped bring Morsi to power.