An Egyptian emergency court convicted 22 people for participating in deadly food riots in April, handing out sentences ranging from three to five years, the presiding judge said.
The remaining 27 defendants in the high profile case held in the northern provincial capital of Tanta 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of Cairo, were acquitted, Judge Alsayyed Abdel-Maaboud told The Associated Press.
Defendants screamed at the judge calling him unjust when the verdicts were read out, with some fainting, according to witnesses inside the court.
Thousands of residents of the gritty industrial town of Mahalla al-Kobra rioted in April for two days over the hardships caused by high food prices, destroying posters of the president and clashing with security troops.
The demonstrations were quashed by tear gas and shotgun-wielding security forces who killed three people and arrested dozens of others.

Sarah Carr reports…

The trial of 49 individuals on charges allegedly committed in Mahalla during the events of April 6 and 7 concluded Thursday with defense pleadings.

The Tanta Emergency State Security Court which heard the case will issue its verdict on Dec. 15.
Two of the defendants were released Thursday. Essam Ibrahim was accused of storing stolen goods at an address he has not lived at since 2001, as was established during Saturday’s court session.

Also released was Ahmad Farhana. Farhana had began shouting during Thursday’s session, in some distress, and while the court did not say so explicitly, defense lawyer Hamdy El-Assiouty said that this was because he was clearly mentally disabled and could not be held responsible for his actions.

The judge hearing the case prolonged court sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, in order to hear the pleadings of the more than 10 defense lawyers representing the group of 49 defendants.

Ahmad Seif El-Islam argued the unconstitutionality of the emergency state security court.
He told the court that Military Order 1, issued in 1971, gives the military ruler (the President of Egypt) the power to transfer certain cases from the ordinary judiciary to emergency state security courts whose composition he can decide.

Seif El-Islam argued that this, together with the absence of an appeal before a higher judicial body and the fact that verdicts issued by emergency state security courts must be approved by the President, rendered them in violation of the Egyptian Constitution’s provisions on the independence of the judiciary and its guarantees of a fair trial.

He pointed to three cases against the Egyptian government currently before the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights one of which concerns death sentences handed down to three men found guilty of carrying out the 2004 Taba bombings.

Convicted by an emergency state security court, the three men do not have the right of appeal, which forms one of the bases of the case against the Egyptian government.

In reaching its verdict, Seif El-Islam urged the Tanta court “not to force us to have to recourse to the African Commission again.”

Seif El-Islam also argued that with combining of functions of both bringing charges and investigation in a single body, the public prosecution office (PPO) is in violation of the Constitution.

He argued that the PPO investigation records in this case demonstrated that it “had allowed its role of bringing charges to take precedence over that of its investigatory role.”

As an example of this Seif El-Islam pointed to the charges against one defendant who is accused of stealing a computer monitor from a school in Mahalla and stashing it under a bed in his home.

Seif El-Islam said that the PPO “had not troubled itself to check whether the monitor would in fact fit underneath the bed.”

The defense team alleges that the contradictions in the state security investigations reports and the fact that none of the defendants were arrested while in the act of committing the crimes imputed against them and exposed a plan by state security investigations to make the 48 men and 1 women “scapegoats” for the events of April 6 and 7 in Mahalla.

Defendants 1–10 are accused of together plotting a mass gathering with the aim of committing criminal acts which they are then alleged to have carried out with the other defendants.
Some of the charges against the defendants carry prison sentences of up to 15 years.

It is the defense team’s case that the crowds which gathered in Mahalla on April 6 did so in a peaceful expression of their discontent about rising food prices in Egypt.

Seif El-Islam alleged that violence erupted when a police officer assaulted an elderly woman in front of crowds in Mahalla’s central Shoun Square.

“Political will wants a scapegoat for the events of April 6 because they’re the first of their kind since January 1977,” lawyer Sayyed Fathy told the court.

Fathy pointed to the absence of banners bearing political slogans during the demonstrations in Mahalla as evidence that they expressed social and economic, rather than political, grievances.
Security forces were widely criticized for their heavy-handed use of force — including live ammunition — against protesters. Three people were killed during the events.

Fathy pointed to the heavy use of anonymous sources used by the police, and the fact that many of these sources merely relayed to the police second-hand information.

He quoted a Cassation Court judgment which stated that the basing of a court verdict on “a testimony delivered from an unknown source” is invalid.

Lawyer Ahmad Ezzat questioned why none of the defendants were arrested while in the act of committing the crimes alleged against them.

He told the court that 11 people were held at the time stores in Mahalla were vandalized (and subsequently released by the PPO) and questioned why not a single defendant accused of vandalizing and looting the stores was arrested at the scene.

He alleged that the framing by state security investigations of individuals with past criminal convictions is a long-standing practice.

The defense team allege serious violations of procedural guarantees: at least three of the defendants were questioned without the presence of a lawyer. Others were illegally detained in state security investigations headquarters without charge.

Seif El-Islam argued that the torture of defendant Hamada Tawfik invalidates the confessions made by some of the defendants. He told the court that it is sufficient to torture a single defendant in order to spread fear amongst co-defendants where they are kept together in a single cell and witness the torture’s after-effects.

During Thursday’s session three IT teachers at the Taha Hussein and Abdel Hay Khalil schools in Mahalla gave evidence that the computer equipment brought into the courtroom as evidence — which the prosecution alleges the defendants stole from the schools — had never in fact belonged to either school.

“The logical outcome of the investigations, and investigations reports containing false information should be the invalidation of all the PPO investigations in this case,” Seif El-Islam told the court.

“The police claim that they discovered the existence of the ‘organization’ created by the defendants through surveillance of meetings between them before April 6. However, police surveillance only began on April 11.

“The only logical conclusion is that the people involved in the investigation had magical powers enabling them to see into the past,” Seif El-Islam said.

Sarah Carr: “Defence pleadings continue in Mahalla 49 case. Final day of case today.”

Per Bjorklund: “A teacher from Taha Hussein school testify that the computers used as evidence were not stolen from the school.”

Sarah Carr: “Defence lawyers r being continuously interrupted during their pleadings. A protester is arrested in the Tanta court house. But is released almost immediately.”

Per Bjorklund: “The prosecutor can hardly keep his eyes open. He fell asleep twice.”

Photos from the trial by Sarah Carr:

Well I can tell them EXACTLY what was on that card. If it’s blank, they tampered! I was taking photos of women protesting when they kidnapped me!
In any case that card had at least 50 photos on it I’d say, primarily of the evening I was arrested — the women who were waiting for their arrested men were making a very calm sit-in protest, and a few were standing holding signs. Mohammed would remember what they said. They were asking for info on their sons, husbands, etc, who went missing. I had been photographing them for a few days (the photos of the women wailing) but the police REALLY didn’t want me getting shots evidencing the ‘missing,’ because whenever i got near them I was harassed by plainclothes officers and they tried to grab me several times.
By the way, that card was supposed to be returned, that much is on record with my embassy, the very fact that they HAVE it proves illegal activity on their part. As well there is the prosecutor’s report releasing me and Mohamemd before his re-arrest.

UPDATE: Here’s a DNE report by Sarah Carr, and another one by El-Badeel.

UPDATE: Photos of today’s session, taken by Sarah Carr.

The Mahalla 49 trial resumes today.

Eman, a legal administrator in the Education Ministry and the sister of Mahalla defendant Raafat Muhammad, interviewed last Saturday:
“He was taken from the house on 10 April, 3am, by an informer form Mahalla’s 2nd Police Station named Ibrahim el-Game’i and the Criminal Investigations officer Khaled Ammar. Later he was taken to State Security’s office in Mahalla.
“They tortured him,” she said while collapsing into tears. “All the people (prisoners) were tortured. The officers and informers stepped on their (detainees’) private parts with their shoes, while asking them to identify persons in pictures. They electrically shocked my brother on his shoulders. He and the rest were blindfolded most of the time, and had their hands handcuffed from the back.”