JERUSALEM - An Israeli lawmaker says he offered the embattled Hosni Mubarak asylum in Israel but the then-president of Egypt turned him down "because he was a patriot."

Lawmaker Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio he made the offer several months ago when visiting Mubarak, who at the time was besieged by protests.

The two men are friends.

A government spokesman was not able to immediately say whether the offer had been cleared with the government.

The 83-year-old Mubarak was toppled from power in February after a nearly 30-year autocratic reign.

He was wheeled into a Cairo courtroom on a gurney Wednesday at the start of his historic trial on charges of corruption and ordering the killing of protesters during the uprising that ousted him.