A retrial of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak over his role in the deaths of protesters in 2011 is to open on May 11, judicial sources told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

The decision comes as Egypt's public prosecutor ordered the former president back to Tora prison from a Cairo military hospital after his health was deemed stable.

The International Monetary Fund said Monday that talks on a multi-billion dollar loan to stabilize Egypt's finances had made progress, noting steps taken by Cairo to adjust energy subsidies.

In a statement on the IMF's staff visit to Egypt over the past two weeks, mission chief Andreas Bauer applauded initial moves to adjust policy by the Egyptian government.

There was a time when a constellation of Jewish Egyptian stars shone on the country's arts and music scene, and when streets in Cairo and Alexandria brimmed with Jewish shops.

But by the turn of the 21st century, Egypt's Jews had become a faded memory, their synagogues empty and their old neighborhoods offering scant testimony to a once-thriving community.

An Egyptian court on Monday ordered the release of former president Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters but he will remain in custody pending investigation into fraud charges, state media reported.

The Cairo Court of Appeal ordered Mubarak's release after the expiry of the maximum temporary detention of two years, the reports said. He had been granted a retrial in the murder case, appealing against a life sentence.

The judge in the retrial of Egyptian former President Hosni Mubarak recused himself on Saturday, in a chaotic opening hearing that lasted just seconds and saw a proud and combative Mubarak smile and wave in the dock.

Judge Mostafa Hassan Abdallah told the court he would send the case to the Court of Appeal, which will then refer the trial to a new circuit, sending the fate of the ousted strongman back to square one.

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi and the military have closed ranks to deny charges that soldiers had killed and tortured protesters, following leaks of an inquiry report implicating officers.

Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who is also army chief, denied in a televised statement aired Friday that the military had committed abuses, after talks with Morsi, who named the fact-finding inquiry last year.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi promoted military commanders on Thursday in show of support for the army amid rumors of tensions between the Islamist leader and the once ruling generals.

The promotions come after the Egyptian press and Britian's Guardian newspaper reported that a fact finding committee Morsi had appointed found evidence of military abuses during the 2011 revolt that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

The Egyptian military ordered senior doctors to operate without anesthetic on protesters injured during demonstrations against military rule, according to extracts of a leaked report published in the Guardian newspaper on Friday.

The report into military and police malpractice since 2011, commissioned by President Mohammed Morsi, also found evidence that medical staff and soldiers attacked demonstrators inside the same Cairo hospital, the British newspaper reported.

Armed Bedouin tribesmen freed a Hungarian peacekeeper in Egypt's Sinai after briefly detaining him on Thursday to press for the release of a jailed relative, police officials said.

The Bedouin set the soldier free after tribal leaders intervened, and the kidnappers had not realized they were capturing a member of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) stationed in the peninsula, the police said.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has ordered the withdrawal of complaints filed against journalists for publishing rumors about him, said a statement posted Wednesday on the presidency's Twitter account.

"The president has ordered the withdrawal of all legal complaints filed against journalists for publishing rumors on him," the statement said.