AL Shater’s Trial postponed to 19 August

Fourth session of Military tribunal against MB leaders has been postponed till Sunday, 19 August 2007.
 
In a statement to Ikhwanweb, head of MB defense panel Abdel Monem Abdel Maqsud has confirmed that there is nothing new in today”s session. It was merely to focus on checking the rest of evidence and the next session will be for opening Hassan Malek’s safe and listening to the witnesses’ testimonies.
 
Muhammed Toson, bar association deputy chairman, has similarly stated, “ in a military tribunal the court ruling is undoubtedly pre-arranged. Today, the rest of evidence has been checked, but unfortunately without the defendants’ presence”, a fact which he especially denounced.  He affirmed that any check should be supervised and carefully watched to prevent any manipulation with the evidence.
 
Wife of defendant Hassan Malek dismissed the tribunal as a “farce” and wondered why the judge has decided to postpone opening her husband’s safe while he actually knows the secret code. “Doing this”, according to her, “only signifies that the judge has no intention to open it”.
 
MP and defense team member Sobhi Saleh said, “the session has been postponed till 19/8 in order to summon minutes clerk Atef Al Huseini to handle the rest of evidence”.
 
 “ All the evidence, including Malek’s safe, has undergone some sort of manipulation. For example, Al Sherbeni owned a Toshiba laptop, but in the court there was a very old computer that had nothing to do with the defendant’s,” Saleh added.
 
He also said, “in the following session we will listen to prosecution witnesses and then there will be prosecution as well as defense pleadings.”