Egypt’s Justice Experts continue their strike:

Justice experts held prayers yesterday on the outside stair steps of the Ministry of Justice’s downtown Cairo headquarters, in an atmosphere full of grief after receiving the news of the death of their colleague, Ahmad Hassan, an expert from the Assiut office, who died on his way to join the Cairo sit-in.
A delegation of the strikers headed yesterday to Assiut to take part in Hassan’s funeral, while other experts prayed on the ministry’s stair steps in Cairo..
“The ministry’s officials are betting we won’t be able to continue (striking) in Ramadan, but we’re ready to continue until al-Fitr Feast,” said the experts, assuring their will to remain on strike until their demands are fulfilled.
Experts had their first sohour, the last meal eaten before dawn after which fasting starts, using their cell phones as a source of illumination, while some of the striking experts’ children joined their parents’ sohour meal and prayers.
The experts are the Justice Ministry civil servants assigned with technical consultancies during judicial investigations and trials. One of their primary demands is the cancellation of a decision that gives courts the right to send the experts only a portion of each case’s entire file. The experts say their working conditions are much harder. Instead of receiving the whole case file at once, they receive only a few documents from each case file, meaning they are forced to go and collect the rest of the case information from a number of sources. The ensuing waste of time, effort and money, they say, will be immense.
The other demand is a change in job regulations that were established at the time of King Farouk by royal decree number 96 in1952. These regulations set the ground rules for salaries, transportation remuneration and other rules for the experts to work by some 55 years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13pNR_a1TOI

Justice experts from around the country came to Cairo yesterday to find out about the status of the second round of negotiations with the Ministry of Justice. The ministry released a statement denouncing the crisis and saying that all experts have resumed work.
“Everything that concerns incentives, the way cases are delivered from courts and assignments of experts to courts in addition to the experts’ law project was agreed upon during the last negotiations,” the statement said.
The statement also said that the experts came to Cairo to avoid protesting. Experts denied this statement, reiterating that their strike will continue until their demands are met. Experts also denied being informed with what came in the statement, assuring that their strike will continue until their demands are fulfilled by a ministerial statement.
“We weren’t even notified with what happened in the last negotiations,” a striking expert said.
The experts continued their call for President Hosni Mubarak to settle the conflict so they can return home before the holy month of Ramadan. They are also demanding a set of protocols to end the strike to be agreed upon with the ministry.
The experts are the Justice Ministry civil servants assigned with technical consultancies during judicial investigations and trials. One of their primary demands is the cancellation of a decision that gives courts the right to send the experts only a portion of each case’s entire file. The experts say their working conditions are much harder. Instead of receiving the whole case file at once, they receive only a few documents from each case file, meaning they are forced to go and collect the rest of the case information from a number of sources. The ensuing waste of time, effort and money, they say, will be immense.
The other demand is a change in job regulations that were established at the time of King Farouk by royal decree number 96 in1952. These regulations set the ground rules for salaries, transportation remuneration and other rules for the experts to work by some 55 years later.

Justice Experts’ strike entered its 21st day, as protesters “ballooned” their five demands to the president.
Faced with the Justice Minister’s refusal to meet them, the strikers came up with a new way to make their voices heard. They put together a banner with Mubarak’s picture on it, attached to their demands.
The banner was flown into the air with the help of balloons tied to it, reaching the 13th floor where the Justice Minister’s office exists, passing by the 5th floor that includes the office of the Justice Minister’s Assistant for the Judicial Inspection Affairs.
At the top of the demands’ list was issuing a law to equalize state litigators and the administrative prosecutors, annul the decision that “overlooks justice and the plaintiffs’ rights,” especially in deciding to delegate plaintiffs to courts and in implementing Regulation No. 8 for the Year 2009 that prevents sending case files to the experts’ offices, and finally giving the authority back to the justice experts’ head sector.
Mahmoud Kobaissy, the head of the Alexandrian Justice Experts told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the heads of the experts’ bureaus asked the Justice Minister to set a date for meeting in the strike solidarity statement they issued past Wednesday. But, no date has been set yet.
Experts chanted during their protest in front of the Justice Ministry, saying they were confident of President Mubarak’s support to fulfill their demands, especially after the five-member delegation’s meeting with the presidency representative the day before yesterday. The representative had promised to inform the president of their demands and assured their problem would be tackled quickly.
Among the protesters’ chants was: “Mubarak, We went to your doorstep. So please make a decision, We are waiting for you!”
In other developments, the heads of Justice Experts’ bureaus have also announced they would be joining the strike starting next Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a big number of Justice Experts are still staging an open-ended sit-in in the Nile Delta provinces of Qalyuobia, Damiette, and Daqahahliya, as they prepare to join their striking colleagues in Cairo next Wednesday