CAIRO: Demonstrators scuffled with police outside the court where the trial of former President Hosni Mubarak resumed on Monday, when senior policemen were due to give the first witness testimony.
Mubarak, in hospital since April with heart problems and other reported ailments, was wheeled on a gurney into a metal defendants’ cage in the court, at the Cairo Police Academy.
Egypt’s state television showed Mubarak, who is in ill health, covering his face from the sun as he was carried on a stretcher from a helicopter that landed inside the police academy where the courtroom has been set up. He was taken to an ambulance which brought him to a small waiting room.
Judge Ahmed Refaat has banned live television coverage of the trial after the first two sessions when Egyptians watched riveted as their 83-year-old former leader lay behind bars.
Lawyers applauded the judge’s decision, saying it would prevent witnesses being influenced by each other or the public. But the decision angered many activists and relatives of those killed in the crackdown.
Mubarak is the first Arab leader to stand trial in person since popular uprisings swept the Middle East this year.
Hundreds of victims’ families and protesters pushed and shoved in an attempt to break through the main gates and enter the court building. Black-clad anti-riot police swung batons and briefly clashed with the protesters, who hurled stones at the security forces.
TV footage also showed metal barricades being thrown, while hundreds of anti-riot police chased young men in the streets.
Ramadan Ahmed Abu, the father of a slain protester, said he applied for permission to attend the session but that the air is charged as families of victims failed for a third time to enter the courtroom.
"People are very frustrated," he said. "We said OK when the judge decided to ban the broadcast of the trial but we want to see it ourselves," he said.
Supporters held up posters of him, chanting: "He gave us 30 years of protection, Mubarak hold your head up high."
Nearby, anti-Mubarak protesters hurled stones at police and some officers threw rocks back. At one point police with shields and batons charged a group of demonstrators.
"He has to be hanged. We don’t want any more delays in the court session," said Mohamed Essam, who had travelled to Cairo from the Nile Delta town of Kafr El-Sheikh.
A man with blood on his face shouted: "I call on the free Egyptian people, the youth of the revolution, to see what state security is doing with the revolutionaries."
Scuffles between pro- and anti-Mubarak demonstrators and police had erupted during the two previous trial sessions.
"We are expecting to hear the testimony of four witnesses that the prosecution has asked to prove the charges against Mubarak and the others," said Gamal Eid, a lawyer representing 16 of some 850 people killed in the uprising against Mubarak.
The former leader, a close ally of the United States, is charged with involvement in the killing of the protesters.
Eid said one witness was a top police officer, General Hussein Saeid, who worked in the police operations room during the uprising. Eid said Saeid had been accused of deleting recordings of what happened in the room at that time.
"(Saeid) had been accused in a decision issued by the general prosecutor of deleting those recordings but he later turned into a witness," Eid said.
Said is head of the communications unit of the Central Security Forces, which were deployed during the uprising to curb protests.
"This is the beginning of the real trial," said Khaled Abu Bakr, a lawyer representing families of slain protesters.
Previous sessions in the trial were taken up largely by procedural matters.
Said’s testimony will help untangle the circumstances in which protesters were shot dead. Prosecutors say he and the other witnesses will tell the court that top security officials ordered snipers to fire on protesters.
The three other witnesses to be called by the court are police officers who were in the operations room during the 18 days of protests. The court named them as Emad Badr Saeid, Bassem Mohamed El-Otaify and Mahmoud Galal Abdel Hamid.
Mubarak is on trial with his sons Gamal, once seen as a future president, and Alaa, a businessman, as well as former Interior Minister Habib Al-Adly and six police officers.
They are to appear at Monday’s session at the heavily fortified police academy in Cairo hosting the trial.
Attorneys have filed motions to summon more than 1,000 witnesses in the trial, including Hussein Tantawi, the head of the council of generals that took over control of the country after Mubarak’s fall. Tantawi was also Mubarak’s defense minister.
Ten Kuwaiti lawyers said they were joining the defense team for Mubarak on Monday. Al Jazeera television said that they had not been allowed into the court when the trial began.
Some of the lawyers said they were making a gesture of gratitude to Mubarak for his support for a US-led coalition that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991.
A news conference held by the Kuwaiti lawyers on Sunday descended into chaos when backers of Mubarak attacked a journalist, scratching his arms and beating him after he asked why the Kuwaitis were defending the ousted president.
Bashayer Jaafar holds a press conference in Cairo on Sept. 4 upon arrival at the capital to voluntarily join the defence team of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. (AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)
