CAIRO: The lawyer for imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour submitted his challenge on Saturday to Nour s December conviction on forgery charges, for which the young liberal is serving a five-year prison term. Lawyer Amir Salem, who defended Nour throughout the six-month trial, delivered his detailed response to the verdict to the Cairo court which sentenced Nour in December, Nour s wife and spokeswoman, Gameela Ismail, said. A 15-page summary of Salem s challenge says that the court made serious procedural errors during the trial and violated the rights of the defendant. Nour, who came a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in presidential elections in September, has repeatedly dismissed the forgery charges as a fabrication to disrupt his presidential campaign and keep him out of politics for the next few years. The prosecution based its case on signatures, allegedly forged, which Nour submitted to the authorities when he applied to set up his El-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party in 2004. But Salem s document says the alleged forgeries were never displayed in court and the court did not allow the defendants to dispute the prosecutor s version of their origin. The appeal is expected to go to the Court of Cassation, a higher court which could overrule the conviction. But a decision could take many months, lawyers say. The Ayman Nour case has become linked to the Egyptian government s attempts to start negotiations with the United States on a free trade agreement. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will visit Egypt next week, said on Friday that the time was not right for such an agreement. She gave no reasons but diplomats have linked it to U.S. displeasure over the Nour case. Reuters
Opposition leader appeals forgery conviction
