The Alexandria Criminal Court will issue on 27 March its verdict on a former state security officer, accused of torturing to death a citizen named Sayed Belal, state-owned media Al-Ahram reported Wednesday.
The officer was accused of unlawfully detaining Belal as a suspect, and torturing him to death, for the purpose of obtaining confessions from the victim with regards to after a bomb attack on a church in Alexandria on New Years Eve in 2011.
The case included four other officers. They all worked at the state security investigations department, before the body was dissolved following the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.Two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia.
However, officers Hossam El-Shenawy and Mohamed El-Shemy were acquitted from all charges in the same case. El-Shenawy, who also worked at the now-obsolete security apparatus, was declared innocent by the court on 16 February.
The court accepted appeals submitted by the defendants’ lawyers against 15-year prison terms previously issued for the three, resulting in their re-trial.
The police officers had arrested Belal along with several others. Belal, a Salafi, was tortured to death by state security investigations service officers and forced to confess to being involved in the incident at the Alexandrian church in 2011.
During New Year’s Eve celebrations in 2011, a car bomb went off outside Two Saints Church in Alexandria, killing 23 people and injuring 97.
