• MB News
  • September 10, 2012
  • 4 minutes read

October 8, Brotherhood Lawyers’ Trial for Allegedly Slandering Constitutional Court Judges

October 8, Brotherhood Lawyers’ Trial for Allegedly Slandering Constitutional Court Judges

Justice Samir Abu El-Maati, Head of Cairo Court of Appeal, announced that October 8, 2012 will see the first session in the trial of Brotherhood lawyers Nasser Alhafi and Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud at the South Cairo Criminal Court headed by Judge Abu Bakr Awad, on charges of insulting Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) judges.


Egypt’s attorney-general Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud referred Alhafi and Abdel-Maksoud to the criminal court on charges arising from accusations they made against SCC judges for rigging the SCC’s ruling to dissolve the democratically-elected parliament a few months ago.

The Brotherhood lawyers had evidence that SCC judges sent news and details of the ruling to dissolve parliament for publication in the Official Gazette before the SCC session meant to look into the matter, and well before the session for deliberation and public announcement of the verdict.

The public prosecution service charged Alhafi with ‘insulting a court’ and making a false claim, citing for evidence Alhafi’s official complaint against the SCC and its judges as submitted by him, accusations which – according to the charges against him – he repeated in some television programs in which he appeared.

Meanwhile, the Facebook page ‘Together to Support Abdel-Moneim and Alhafi’ continued to uncover the basis and background of establishing the SCC and the huge objections that it faced at the time.

The Facebook page said that in 1978, the Judges’ Club (an Egyptian law professionals association) held an emergency General Assembly meeting to protest the draft law that established the SCC.

The Judges’ Club stressed, at the time, that establishing the SCC was a crime against the judiciary and the courts, and a flagrant violation of the Constitution and the law, because it was a political court, with clear loyalty to the ruling party.

The page further said that the SCC is the only court in Egypt to-date that has been established by the Chairman of the now-dissolved National Party, ousted president Hosni Mubarak, while all Egyptian courts are established by the judiciary.

Earlier, on Sunday, August 26, the Egyptian Bar Association held a conference of solidarity with the lawyers Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud and Nasser Alhafi, protesting their referral by the attorney-general to the Criminal Court on charges of insulting the SCC.