Tag: courts

Prosecutor appeals ferry ruling as uproar continues

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

The families of Al-Salam 98 ferry victims received Sunday’s court ruling acquitting the owner and other defendants with outrage that was echoed throughout Egypt.
“This is the most depressing and darkest ruling in Egypt’s history since the Denshway Trial,” scriptwriter Wahid Hamed told a local paper, in reference to the 1906 death sentence six Egyptian farmers received for chasing a British soldier, who later died of sunstroke.
Mamdouh Ismail, the owner of the ferry that sank in February 2006 in the Red Sea killing 1,034 people, was acquitted by the Safaga Misdemeanors Court. His son and three Al-Salam executives were also acquitted. Ismail, his son and one of the executive have since fled the country.
Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud issued a statement after the decision saying he would appeal the ruling, and called for a retrial.
Mahmoud said he wanted a retrial because of “violations in documented records, corruption in investigation, shortcomings in validating and arbitrary conclusions,” Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported.
The Al-Salam 98 sank after a fire broke out in its vehicle bay while they were traveling from Saudi Arabia to Egypt. Most of the victims were Egyptian workers returning home.
Only Salaheddin Gomaa, captain of another ferry, the Saint Catherine, was sentenced to six months in jail for failing to come to the assistance of the ferry. The court found that Gomaa had failed to show “compassion” and “did not do his duty by failing to go to the rescue of victims.” He was also fined LE 10,000.
Local and pan-Arab TV stations showed footage of victims’ relatives crying and beating their chests in grief after hearing the ruling.
“My brother, my brother,” one woman screamed after the verdict, according to footage aired on Al Jazeera television which also showed security men scuffling with relatives and another woman being manhandled.
Dozens of relatives, many carrying photographs of their dead loved ones, were crammed into the court building, although the heavy security presence prevented them from entering the courtroom itself.
Others wailed in grief on the steps outside. “God help us, 1,034 people are dead!” shouted one man.
Most of the victims were from poor families in southern Egypt, and the court scenes were reminiscent of the emotional outpourings in the days following the sinking as anxious relatives waited in vain for bodies to be recovered.

Corruption and nepotism par excellence

Posted on By 3arabawy

WTF!

An Egyptian court has cleared a ferry-owner and four others of all charges relating to the sinking of a ferry with the loss of more than 1,000 lives.
The vessel sank in February 2006 as it was carrying passengers from Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian port of Safaga.
A captain of another ship was found guilty of failing to help the stricken ferry and was sentenced to six months in prison.
The sinking was Egypt’s worst maritime disaster.
A parliamentary inquiry blamed the ferry company for the disaster, saying it had continued to operate the boat despite serious defects.
There were angry scenes at the court where many relatives of the victims had gathered to hear the verdicts.

Tens of Mahalla suspects to face trial in an Egyptian exceptional court

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports:

The trial of 48 men and one woman accused of a range of criminal offences allegedly committed during the April 6 clashes will begin on Aug. 9, their lawyers told Daily News Egypt.
The group — five of whom are at large — will be tried in an exceptional court on what lawyers allege are spurious, trumped-up charges including “criminal damage to public and private property, assault of a public official, unlawful assembly of more than five people and illegal possession of weapons.”
The announcement by workers in the Ghazl El-Mahalla Spinning Mill that they would go on strike on April 6 had prompted calls by activists and political opposition groups for a nationwide general strike on the same day.
When the Ghazl El-Mahalla strike was aborted following intense intimidation by security bodies and worker disunity, hundreds of people in the Delta town of Mahalla, in which the factory is located, took to the streets shortly around 4 pm.
According to journalists and eyewitnesses, the crowds of people which converged on the main square were protesting rising food prices caused by soaring inflation.
While the government alleges that it was criminally-motivated thugs who were responsible for the ensuing violence that broke out on April 6 and 7, eyewitnesses say that heavy-handed policing by hundreds of security body troops who allegedly used live ammunition against crowds was the real cause of the violence.
A 15-year-old boy, Ali Mabrouk, was shot dead while standing in the third floor balcony of his home on the night of April 6.
His family told Daily News Egypt that central security force troops were underneath the house at the time of the shooting.
Hundreds of people — including children — were rounded up and arrested over the course of the two days.
According to defense lawyer Ahmad Ezzat of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, some of the group of 49 who were either detained or remain in detention, have alleged that they were tortured.
The charges against the group — some carrying lengthy prison sentences — will be heard by an exceptional court established under the emergency law which lacks basic guarantees of due process.
Human Rights Watch in a statement issued on Friday called on Egyptian authorities to quash the transfer of the case to the Supreme State Security Court.
“The Supreme State Security Court was established under Egypt’s emergency law in 1980 and follows procedures that violate internationally recognized fair trial norms,” the statement reads.
“In violation of guarantees of the independence of the judiciary, two military judges may sit alongside the Security Court’s regular bench of three civilian judges,” it continues.
In addition to concerns about the trial process itself, lawyers and activists have expressed concern both about the police investigation process and the motives for bringing the charges.
In early June Egyptian daily El-Badeel published parts of the public prosecution office’s questioning of a state security officer involved in the case.
Muhammad Fathy Abdel-Rahman told the public prosecution office that he had relied on “80 or 90 sources” to gather evidence against those alleged to have committed crimes on April 6 and 7 in Mahalla.
Abdel-Rahman reportedly refused to divulge the name of these sources — some of whom are not police — in order to “protect their safety.”
He was also quoted as saying that not all the sources were actually present at the scene of the events.
Furthermore, Abdel-Rahman allegedly told the public prosecution office that he and other members of the police investigation squad did not actually take part in surveillance of suspects “because of the scale of the events” in Mahalla.
In an op-ed published this month in the Socialist Worker, a British publication, activist Hossam El-Hamalawy alleges that the 49 are “scapegoats for the uprising” in Mahalla and describes the legal process against them as a “show trial.”