CAIRO: A coalition of opposition parties and NGOs on Thursday formed a legal committee in preparation for initiating a lawsuit against top government figures for criminal negligence in Duweiqa.
They accused government officials including PM Ahmed Nazif, Minister of Housing Ahmed El-Magraby and Cairo Governor Abdel Azim Wazir, of criminal responsibility for the deaths of more than a 100 people buried under the rockslide in the Moqattam shantytown.
The leaders of opposition parties and NGOs who met on Thursday at the Downtown headquarters of the Leftist Union, blamed the government of mass murder for ignoring reports on previous collapses.
The reports and research conducted were numerous, some prepared by government bodies warning of a pending disaster many years ago.
Leader of the Leftist Union Refaat El Said told Daily News Egypt that the heads of the opposition parties Al-Wafd, the Nasserist Party and the Democratic Front Party will meet in the coming days with the aim of reaching an agreement on the legal framework required to prosecute the accused government officials while they are still in office.
“The nature of the case and the response of a government biased to the rich at the expense of the poor will turn this into a public opinion case. Prosecuting them while still in office will lead to local and international pressure to hold them accountable, El Said continued.
However lawyer Montasser El Zayat of the Freedoms Committee at the Lawyers Syndicate told Daily News Egypt that the only way the officials can be criminally prosecuted is through a case initiated by the Prosecutor General.
He added that traditionally the Prosecutor General has never pressed criminal charges against top government officials, which means that the only alternative is for the opposition to file a misdemeanors case demanding their removal from office.
This would be a negligence case which does not accuse them of criminal liability or mass murder, he said.
A statement by the Leftist Union called for all political parties and NGOs to adopt a project to eradicate slums and shantytowns in favor of affordable public housing.
The coalition includes the Leftist Union, the Nasserist Party, Al-Wafd, the Democratic Front Party and the Freedoms Committee of the Lawyers’ Syndicate as well as NGOs including the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.
In related news, Gawdat El Malt, head of the Central Auditing Agency, formed a committee of five members of the Central Agency for Administrative Monitoring of Economic and Services Ministries to be chaired by Kamelia Fawzy Nassif to investigate the housing problems in Duweiqa before and after the rockslide disaster.
The panel will present a report to Malt before the upcoming Eid vacation.
