(AFP PHOTO / STR)
Cairo Criminal Court adjourned Sunday the “Operations Room” trial involving 52 defendants including Mohammed Soltan, Egyptian- American activist and son of the prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Soltan, and Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie.
At time of print, it was not yet clear when the trial would be resumed.
The defendants are charged with “forming an operations room to direct the Muslim Brotherhood group to defy the government during the Rabaa sit-in dispersal”, according to the statement released by the prosecutor general’s office in February.
Ahmed Helmy, a lawyer working on the case, said that the trial did not start on its designated time due to sound system problems as the defendants are kept inside a glass cell in court so the judge could not hear the defendants and the case was adjourned.
Helmy noted that the court was supposed to hear the testimony of eyewitnesses in the trial on Sunday.
Soltan was arrested in August 2013 for participating in the Rabaa sit-in. He has been on an open-ended hunger strike since 26 January.
The Doctor’s Syndicate issued a release in June stating that Soltan suffered from deteriorating health problems including high blood pressure, low blood sugar and high uric acid. Accordingly the court ordered for him to receive medical care in the prison’s hospital under the supervision of the prosecution.
Helmy said that he was transferred again from the prison’s hospital back to his cell.
Badie has been charged in several cases. He was sentenced to death, along with 183 others, by the Minya Criminal Court on charges of killing two policemen and breaking into Edwa Police Station in August 2013. He is also accused of escaping Wadi El-Natrun prison in January 2011 and spying for the “International Organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood and its armed wing”.
