CAIRO: The state prosecutor on Wednesday postponed indefinitely the trial of eight men charged in connection with a gang murder on World Refugee Day just outside the American University in Cairo (AUC) campus this past July.
Prosecutors changed the charges against the defendants at the last minute, and referred the case to a State Security Court under the country’s Emergency Law.
Family and friends of the accused gathered at the South Cairo Courthouse in Bab El Khalq Wednesday morning. The eight were told two weeks earlier that their months of detention would finally come to an end.
The defendants have been in legal limbo since their arrest in July, when they were detained in connection with a gang fight between members of two Sudanese gangs “the Lost Boys and “the Outlaws.
The fight left one man hacked to death by a machete outside the Greek Campus of AUC.
Friends of the eight men insist they were innocent by-standers to the violent melee, and say there is no evidence against them.
For its part, the prosecutor’s office has avoided setting a firm trial date and instead repeatedly extends their detention for weeks at a time.
At the last such hearing in October, the men were told they would see their day in court on Nov. 7, but it was not to be.
At the last minute, the defendants were taken in shackles from the open-air pen behind the court house to the nearby State Security directorate. They were told that they were now to be charged with a more serious offense.
All eight now stand accused of murder. Before Wednesday’s session, only one of the men was accused of “accidental murder, which carried a penalty of seven to 10 years in jail.
Weapons possession charges against all eight still stand, a crime which carries a sentence of three months to one year in prison.
Lawyers for the men predict that the case will be tried in the State Security Court in Rehab City by mid-December. But they admit that, as the events in Bab El-Khalq demonstrate, the justice system is unpredictable.
Members of the men’s families reacted to the change in the case with dismay, holding their heads in their hands in the court’s crowded entrance hall.
Mohamed Bayoumi, the lawyer in the case, said he remains committed to the case and to his client’s innocence.
“This puts these men in a very difficult situation, and now we just have to work harder, he said. “The prosecutor is still convinced that these men killed the person who died at World Refugee Day because that is what the police officers said. But there are no other witnesses and no real reason to believe that they did this. They are just listening to the testimony of the arresting officer.
Yousef Ahmed Saleh Idris, a friend of Essam Eddin Jubarra – one of the accused – agrees that the men are innocent. He says that Essam was working as a volunteer at the event, and was not a member of any gang.
Idris witnessed his friend’s arrest, and says it was conducted haphazardly by abusive plainclothes officers. He says he thinks the officers wanted to look like they were responding competently to the situation, but were in fact seizing random bystanders based on the color of their skin.
“Essam and his friends were been grabbed by some plainclothes police officers who were dragging them away, he said. “I went over and told the police that he was with us, but they didn’t respond.
“I said I wanted to talk to his boss, so the guy grabbed me too and dragged me over to the main gate at AUC where there was a plainclothes officer sitting, he added. “The officer started screaming ‘Don’t bring anyone to see me over here, how dare you let someone see me here!’
“I told him Essam was with me but he didn’t respond to me and just started screaming at Essam to shut up, and then he told the cops to put Essam in the truck, he said. “When the cops were throwing him in the truck they told me I had two choices – I could either get out of there, or they would arrest me too.
Estimates on the number of refugees in Egypt vary wildly. According to the UNHCR, it has officially registered 45,000 refugees in the country, mainly from Sudan, Somalia and Iraq. But some independent estimates push that figure to as many as three million.
