By Heba Fahmy
CAIRO: The Alexandria Criminal Court adjourned on Monday the case of six high ranking officers, charged with the murder and attempted murder of peaceful protesters, to Oct. 17 amid chaos in the courtroom.
The families were outraged by the “unjustified’ postponement of the trial, Khalaf Bayoumi, the lawyer representing the families of martyrs in Alexandria, told Daily News Egypt, adding that the court released all the defendants.
Security was tightened around the courthouse on Monday including tens of army tanks in preparation for the trial, according to media reports.
The defendants include the head of the security directorate of the governorate and the head of central security forces there. The trial started on April 16. Two officers had been released earlier and one was being tried in absentia, while three remained in custody. On Monday, the court released all the other defendants.
Bayoumi said that the defendants showed up wearing civilian clothes and were surrounded by a number of officers in the dock to prevent people in the court from seeing them.
“We called on the court to allow us to see the defendants, but the court refused without any justification,” he said, adding that it was against the law.
The tension in the courtroom increased with the release order, which eventually led to a war of words between the families of the victims and the defense lawyers, according to reports.
“The families feel that they’re being deprived of their rights and that justice won’t be served,” Bayoumi said.
The lawyers representing the martyrs called for including the investigations of former interior ministry Habib El-Adly regarding his involvement in killing the protesters and the reports issued by the official fact-finding committee in the case, but the court refused.
Ninety-three civilians were killed and 400 were injured in Alexandria alone during the protests, according to Bayoumi.
Clashes between protesters and police forces during the uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak left at least 846 dead over 6,000 injured nationwide, according to a report issued by an official fact-finding mission.
In Cairo, the Appeals Court decided to reinvestigate evidence in the death of General Mohamed El-Batran who was shot dead on Jan 29 in Al-Qatta Prison.
The interior ministry stated that he was shot by prison inmates attempting to escape. However El-Batran’s family believed that he was killed by fellow officers after he refused to follow orders to allow the inmates to leave in an attempt to spread fear and chaos in the country during the 18-day revolt.
Hafez Abou Saeda, lawyer representing El-Batran’s family and head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), said the court ordered that El-Batran’s clothes be re-examined on Tuesday. The court would then set a date for the next hearing.
Abou Saeda said that no autopsy was performed on El-Batran’s body to determine the cause of death, which proved the prosecution’s negligence in dealing with the case.
