Year: 2008

The Mahalla 49 defense team withdrew from the courtroom ten minutes ago in protest.

The lawyers registered officially their demands for: obtaining the rest of the case documents which had not been made available for them up till now despite the start of the trial, summoning Central Security Forces soldiers and Taha Hussein School representatives as witnesses to the rioting and violence that erupted during the April Uprising.

The State Security Prosecutor was scheduled to make his case today, which meant, according to the lawyers, that Judge Muhammad Sameer was to ask the defense team to make their case as early as tomorrow Thursday. “How can we make our case, when we even do not have the case files?” exclaimed defense lawyer Ahmad Ezzat in a telephone call five mins ago. “We registered our requests and withdrew from the courtroom. We are still waiting to hear the Judge’s response.”

As of 3pm, the situation remains as it is, and it’s still unclear whether the SS Prosecutor will go ahead anyways with his speech, will the Judge call it all off today or will he respond to the lawyers’ demands, or what? We’ll see.

UPDATE: 3:15pm: The State Security Prosecutor was asked by the Judge to make his case, without the presence of the defense lawyers, who withdrew earlier from the court room, but the prisoners, enraged, started shouting from their court cage and disrupted the session.

UPDATE: 3:30pm: Under pressure, the judge reconvened the session, responding to all the defense team’s requests, including obtaining copies of the sessions’ minutes, and all prosecution documents, as well as summoning the desired witnesses. The trial was adjourned to tomorrow, and the Prosecutor will be making his case.

UPDATE: Here’s a report from HMLC, and Sarah Carr blogs the session.