Update to this story.

CAIRO — Deposed former president Hosni Mubarak was freed from prison Thursday and flown by helicopter to a military hospital in Cairo a day after a court ordered the release of the longtime strongman.

State-run news media said Mubarak, 85, arrived at the Maadi military hospital aboard a medically equipped helicopter. Dozens of his supporters rallied outside Cairo’s Tora prison earlier in the day as they awaited his release from more than two years in detention, the Associated Press reported.

But the court’s ruling to free Mubarak was greeted mostly with indifference here in the Arab world’s largest country — the most stunning sign yet of how outrage over Mubarak’s iron-fisted rule has faded since the Arab Spring revolt that swept him from power.

Mubarak’s release, attributed to a legal technicality, would have provoked mass outrage in the months after Egypt’s 2011 popular uprising. But seven weeks after a military coup ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and put an end to its brief experiment with Islamist rule, some met the court decision with nostalgia for Mubarak’s order.