CAIRO: The lawyers representing families of the victims performed horribly during Wednesday’s opening session of the corruption and murder trial of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, legal experts said.
The 85 lawyers in attendance, representing 414 victims killed during the uprising earlier this year, were in attendance to ensure the trial runs smoothly, and the interests of the victims are taken into account by the court, Gamal Eid, director for the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, told Daily News Egypt.
However, according to Eid, half of these lawyers weren’t actually official representatives of the victims, while many others were simply “not good lawyers.”
Judge Ahmed Mekky, well known for work advocating for judicial independence over the last decade, had harsher words for their performance.
“The victims’ lawyers were totally horrible. Really, just worse than horrible,” he told DNE.
Despite the trial being a criminal case, the Egyptian judicial system allows courts to invite lawyers representing the victims in order to aid the prosecution, seek financial compensations, and even call for further charges against the accused.
Some legal experts, however, believe that the lawyers’ attendance Wednesday brought little of value to the court case, and may have even threatened its success.
“Their presence just produced chaos. The trial aims to investigate and expose crimes, and these lawyers just threatened the success of the trial to do so,” Mekky complained.
For his part, the director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Ahmed Ragheb, questioned the competencies of the lawyers.
“Their expertise isn’t very strong. Their abilities as lawyers were not at all up to the desired levels,” he explained to DNE, adding that they demonstrated a “lack of a clear strategy,” which left a “bad impression.”
According to Ragheb, the lawyers showed a “clear lack of coordination.”
But, he added, the lack of coordination was a “natural result” from the large amount of victims and lawyers, making it “very hard to control all of them.”
For Ragheb and Eid, the solution is simple: further coordination between the lawyers, and expelling the lawyers who do not truly represent the victims.
While Eid welcomed the idea of bringing in some big name lawyers to join the team, such as Assem Sultan, Ragheb stressed that the only requisite should be a commitment to promote justice.
“We don’t need to see famous lawyers representing the families of the victims. We just need ones who are dedicated and care about the issue and helping Egyptian society.”
In the trial, which began Wednesday, Mubarak, his two sons Gamal and Alaa, former interior minister Habib El-Adly, and six of his aides face charges of corruption and premeditated murder, for ordering the country’s security forces to shoot peaceful protesters earlier this year.
The trial of Mubarak and his two sons was adjourned until August 15, while the trial for El-Adly and his aids resumed on Thursday, but was later adjourned until August 14.
