Mohamed ElGohary

Other Coverages:

1. Nawara Negm (Arabic, including videos from the trial)
2. Ahmed Abdul Fattah (Arabic)
3. Wael Abbas (Arabic)
4. Takhareefy (Arabic)
5. Sokoot Hansawat (Arabic)
6. Egypt WatchMan (Arabic)

new coverages will follow.

I went to the court to attend the trial of Captain Islam Nabih and Corporal Reda Fat'hi who are accused of torturing and sodomizing driver Emad ElKebeer, I arrived at the High Judicial House at 10:00 am then walked around until the beginning of the trial. Then I found Ahmed Abdel Fattah walking around. On our entrance the security on the door of the hall asked us who we were, we told him journalists and we forgot our IDs. We entered then witnessing two trials of obviously false law-suits (confession under torture). Then came another 2 bloggers, Sokoot Hansawat and Mariam. After them at 11:30 came the infamous Islam with nearly a dozen of black-suited soldiers distributing them in a weird way, seemly to put obstacles in front of the video cameras or something. Also I wanted to record that the security prevented any media existence nearly 10 meters near Islam, to the extent that the security shouted at a photographer to get away.

When the trial started, the team of lawyers defending Islam kept attacking the Human Rights organisations, accusing them with the infamous accusation of defaming Egypt's reputation, and getting foreign funds (as if the government never gets them with huge amounts). They also accusing them with that they do not care about the Human Rights but just use them for the sake of their benefits.

And from what is mentioned that these organisations wanted to prevent Egypt from having a seat in the United Nations Human Rights Council.

And to prevent people from thinking that this team is attacking the idea of promoting Human Rights, they handled in (ironically) a paper signed from some judges (as far as I can remember) and was supposed to be published in the national newspapers, as a call to the Egyptian People's Assembly to issue a law to ban foreign funding, esp from USA. (really Ironic, Egypt is the second country getting aid from USA after Israel, military aid and economic aid. Around 1.5 Billion $ annually. With total of 25 Billion $ from 1975 to 2002)

Then came some non-sense, that the Fagr weekly newspaper which mentioned news about the torture incident, was published 2 days before its supposed date, and according to this they claimed that the news was fabricated (I really don't know what is the connection).

Some other non-sense, one of the team stated that they don't watch TV thanks for being so busy with their work as a lawyer, but for the mere chance he was so ill so he opened the TV watching Orbit, in the Qahera AlYoum show (Cairo Today) and he found out that he was accused in assaulting 2 families (which was done with preparation with defence lawyers team, since in the statements of the arrested and the witnesses in the Police interrogations Emad was not there).

Wael Abbas was mentioned as a Human Rights organisation (now this is amusing), mentioning that he made a call in his blog to the United Nations for an international investigation for late Sadat assassination, sometimes I really hate lawyers.

Then came the responsible for defending Corporal Reda Fat'hi obeyed the orders of Islam Nabih to torture Emad ElKebeer, the man was not that mean really and all his talk was about technical details about supposed errors in the investigation and interrogations papers and so but what made me laugh was his comparing the historical example of seizing Benjamin's royal cup when he was arrested in Egypt with the inability of Emad to prove that the one who was mentioned in the video was Reda.

After all this, the prosecutor asked for a postponing to have a look at the papers handled by the defence team, immediately one of the team suggested cancelling the handling of the papers (since the judicial session will end due to their vacation and will resume in September) and they objected this because according to them the accused Islam Nabih will stay in custody for more than the supposed penalty. As if they are so sure that he will be innocent from the sexual assault accusation.

In the end I want to mention that I was happy to meet Ahmed Abdul Fattah, Sokoot Hansawat, Mariam, Nawara Negm, Mina and Asad. Thanks for coming :).