CAIRO: The adjournment Sunday of the case of 13 high and low ranking officers charged with the murder and attempted murder of peaceful protesters near Imbaba police department late January, outraged the victims’ families who called for justice.
The case was postponed till July 3 for the defense team to review the case documents. Meanwhile, the defendants were allowed to resume work in the police force until the court gives its final verdict.
The case was previously adjourned in May to June 4.
“Some of the defendants remain in their posts in the Imbaba police department, while others have been deployed in different departments in other districts,” lawyer Haitham Mohamadin from El-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence told Daily News Egypt.
“This is completely against the law,” he added.
According to Mohamadin, 22 civilians were killed and injured by officers near the Imbaba police department.
Clashes between protesters and police forces during the uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak left at least 846 dead and 6,467 injured nationwide, according to a report issued by an official fact-finding mission.
The father of 26-year-old Ihab Mohamed Nassar, who was shot in the back of the head, told DNE, “My wife and I are very upset and distraught.”
“We can burn down the Imbaba police department if we wanted to, but we don’t want to vandalize the country,” Nassar, 56, said.
Dozens of families protested in front of the State TV building following the verdict, accusing the judiciary of procrastinating and demanding justice for their children
The families claimed that police informants offered them money in exchange for dropping the lawsuits against the accused police officers.
“An informant from my area told me he would pay me whatever I wanted if I dropped the charges against the officers who killed my son,” Nassar said.
“He wanted to bribe me in exchange for my son’s blood,” Nassar said. “Of course I refused. … May God help us.”
Hend Nasr, the sister of martyr Mohamed Nasr, 30, said that her brother’s friends prevented informants from going up to her apartment to offer her money to drop the charges.
Nasr said that her brother was shot in the chest and was left to bleed for two hours before he died.
The prosecution called for the maximum sentence, the death sentence in this case, and civil society lawyers demanded a compensation of LE 10,000 for each family.
Khalaf Bayoumi, the lawyer representing the families of martyrs in Alexandria, said that the families were forcibly taken to police stations to settle the case and drop the lawsuits against the officers.
He added that witnesses were being pressured to change their testimonies.
“This is all because the court keeps postponing the case two months at a time,” Bayoumi said. “This gives police officers the opportunity to use their position to coerce the families to drop the charges against them.”
Six high ranking officers in Alexandria including the head of the security directorate of the governorate and the head of the central security department are currently on trial for the murder and attempted murder of protesters.
The Alexandria trial was adjourned on April 16 to June 20. Two officers were released during the trial and one was being tried in absentia, while three remain in custody.
“The head of the central security department of Alexandria was even promoted to head of the central security department of all Egypt, even though he’s on trial,” Bayoumi said.
Ninety-three civilians were killed and 400 were injured in Alexandria alone during the protests, said Bayoumi.
“They only charged six security officials to begin with which isn’t nearly enough,” Bayoumi said. “They used them as a scapegoat to calm the people down.”
In Beni Sueif governorate, Hanaa Hussein, mother of 12-year-old Asmaa who was shot in the eye while she was standing in the balcony of her home late January, said that lawyers representing the defendants accused of shooting her daughter also offered her money to drop the charges.
“[The defense lawyers] visited me at home and offered me LE 25,000, but I refused,” Hussein said.
“My daughter suffers from hemorrhage behind her eye and retinal detachment,” Hussein said. “She still needs two more operations.”
Hussein filed a complaint against former interior minister Habib El-Adly and the head of the security directorate in Beni Sueif for severely injuring her daughter.
The trial is scheduled to start on June 16.
Al-Nadeem Center had told DNE on May 23 that a police officer who was previously convicted of torturing a man to death had been reinstated and is now pressuring the families of the Jan. 25 martyrs to drop the lawsuits against policemen.
The center demanded the suspension of officers involved in torture cases in police stations until all the investigations into those cases are complete.
