A Cairo criminal court has adjourned proceedings in the ongoing trial of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, former interior minister Habib El-Adly and five of the latter’s assistants until Tuesday. The move followed the sudden death of a chief defence lawyer on Sunday.
Defendants in the case stand accused of ordering security forces to fire on unarmed protesters during last year’s 18-day Tahrir Square uprising.
When trial proceedings resume on Tuesday, the court is expected to hear testimony from former police general Ahmed Razmy, ex-head of the interior ministry’s Central Security Forces (CSF) and a defendant in the case.
Ibrahim Ali Saleh, chief lawyer on Razmy’s defence team, had been scheduled to present his case to the court on Monday, but died suddenly on Sunday morning. The exact cause of the 80-year-old lawyer’s death has not been confirmed.
The defence team therefore requested that the court adjourn trial proceedings until Tuesday.
El-Adly’s defence team, meanwhile, finished making its case on Monday for its client’s innocence. The former minister’s lawyers maintain that El-Adly had never ordered his assistants to use live ammunition against protesters, but rather had urged them to exercise self-restraint.
Defence lawyers went on to assert that armed “infiltrators” had been responsible for killing unarmed protesters in the early days of the revolution that eventually toppled Mubarak.
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