Tag: courts

Three Egyptian journalists jailed

Posted on By 3arabawy

Mubarak’s crackdown on the free press continues:

A Egyptian court has sentenced three journalists to two years in jail for “damaging the image of justice”.
Anwar al-Hawari, the editor of Al-Wafd, a newspaper for the opposition party of the same name, was jailed for publishing “untrue information which damaged the reputation of the justice system and the justice ministry”, the court ruled.
The two other journalists were Mahmud Ghallab and Amir Othman.
The three did not attend the hearing and remain free on bail, pending an appeal.
A judicial source has said that they were also ordered to pay small fines.
The judge had accepted the case filed by several Egyptian lawyers after Al-Wafd had quoted Mamduh Mari, the justice minister, as saying that 90 per cent of Egyptian judges were incompetent.

SS Police torturer acquitted

Posted on By 3arabawy

No justice for torture victims under Mubarak’s regime.

A Cairo court on Tuesday acquitted a state security officer of charges of torturing to death a man he had arrested in 2003, a judicial source said.
The court must publish within 45 days its reason for acquitting Captain Ashraf Safwat whose alleged involvement in the killing came to light earlier this year through Egypt’s activist Internet blogger community.
Back on Sept. 16, 2003, Safwat summoned Mohammed Abdel Qader and his brother to a Cairo police station. Abdel Qader died five days later and an autopsy said torture by electric shock combined with a weak heart was the cause of death.
In January, Abdel Qader’s case appeared on a blog, featuring excerpts from the forensic report and gruesome autopsy pictures.
“There is evidence of the application of high temperature to the right and left breast and the penis resembling the effects of electrocution with an electric wire,” read an excerpt. “He was subject to those injuries hours before his death.”
It took seven months for Safwat to answer the subpoena in the case, and when he did it was with his own autopsy report claiming the burns came from a defibrillator used to revive the victim after a heart attack.