In the past 20 years, campaigns against cigarette smoking and legal recourse against tobacco companies have surged.
But in Egypt, where smoking is a way of life, one presiding judge decided to fight his own war against nicotine.
During a session in his court, the judge was baffled at seeing a court guard – a conscript – light a fag and pass on to the accused standing in the barred dock.
This infuriated the judge who promptly halted courtroom proceedings, ordered the conscript to be arrested, and immediately passed sentence.
Six months in jail, the judge told the shocked conscript, for disrespecting decorum in a court of law.
The conscript cried out he was only showing sympathy for the accused, but to no avail.
There goes his life in a puff.
