CAIRO: One hundred and fifteen lawyers filed a complaint to Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud Monday demanding the arrest of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak if he sets foot in Egypt on charges of killing Egyptian police officers in Sinai last Thursday.
The complaint, filed by lawyer Mamdouh Ismail and signed by 115 lawyers, mentioned the report of the Multinational Force and Observer (MFO) confirming that Israeli ground forces crossed the Egyptian borders and shot Egyptian officers.
The forces that examined the Eilat-Taba border crossing in North Sinai denied media reports that the Egyptian officers were killed in an Israeli air raid.
The complaint said that the ground forces, commanded by Barak, stormed the Egyptian borders killing Captain Ahmed Galal Abdel Kader, soldiers Osama Galal Imam, Taha Mohamed Ibrahim, Hassan Ibrahim Hassan and Hesham Safwat Abdel-Rahman.
Egyptian investigations showed that the left side of Abdel Kader’s head was completely destroyed by gunfire; one soldier was shot seven times, another was shot in the feet and bled to death because his arteries were destroyed, the fourth was shot twice in the chest and the stomach, and the fifth was shot in the head.
A medical report said that the bullets used were the kind “that explode in the body.”
The complaint was based on the findings of the MFO investigation and the prosecution’s, and described the border killings as “attempted murder”, urging the Prosecutor General to issue arrest warrants to Barak and generals in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) if they come to Egypt.
Coordinator of the Freedoms Committee at the Lawyers’ Syndicate Mamdouh Ismail told Daily News Egypt that the committee is exploring other paths of legal action in case the Prosecutor General does not act on it.
"We are looking into all possible means of escalation to try those who killed our Egyptian soldiers," Ismail said.
