CAIRO: Lawyer Montasser El-Zayat accused the Lawyers' Syndicate chairman Monday of monopolizing the decision-making in the current crisis between lawyers on one side and judges and prosecutors on the other. “Lawyers' Syndicate Chairman Hamdy Khalifa wants to appear like a hero [who can work the problem out]. He does not want to listen to anybody's opinion, working alone all the time,” El-Zayat told Daily News Egypt. “Neither does Khalifa allow anybody to be part of the negotiations [to solve the crisis]. Let it be so. We will leave him to do whatever he wants,” El-Zayat, also a former syndicate member, added. “The whole situation has been managed haphazardly.” El-Zayat has been actively involved in the attempts to contain the situation from the very beginning. On the other hand, syndicate board member Mohamed Abdel-Rahman told Daily News Egypt that no differences had erupted between the lawyers and Khalifa or within the board itself. “We do take part in decision making but negotiations as such have a special nature for being conducted with the judiciary,” Abdel-Rahman told Daily News Egypt. Ahmed Saif, lawyer at Hisham Mubarak Law Center, said that the elected syndicate board should manage the crisis in the way it sees right. “There are usually unannounced details as to negotiations conducted in such situations,” Saif added. The crisis first broke out after lawyers Ehab Saey El-Din and Mustafa Fatouh were handed down a five-year imprisonment sentence earlier this month. Both lawyers were found guilty of assaulting and offending Basem Abu El-Rous, the local prosecutor in Tanta. The verdict was appealed. The two lawyers had said earlier that they were insulted and attacked by the prosecutor first. The situation caused a crisis between lawyers on one hand and prosecutors and judges on the other. In response, lawyers held general strikes, protests and sit-ins nationwide. The outraged lawyers' stance was supported by Khalifa. Meanwhile, a closed meeting was held Monday between Chairman of Supreme Judicial Council Moqbel Shaker and Khalifa in a bid to contain the crisis. No details were available on the meeting results until press time. “Khalifa has been holding [around] 20 meetings so far [with no concrete results],” El-Zayat argued. El-Zayat was initially a member in the defense team of Saey El-Din and Fatouh, but he decided to pull out. “I will not attend the coming appeal session,” he said. “There was no defense plan … and even when we agreed on something, Khalifa violated it,” El-Zayat added. El-Zayat suggested that a lawyer not directly involved in the crisis should lead the defense team. Abdel-Rahman denied that there were any disagreements among the defense team members. “Whoever is capable of offering help in the case is welcome to join us,” Abdel-Rahman, a defense team member himself, said. On Saturday, the Lawyers' Syndicate strike deterred defense lawyers from pleading their case during the latest hearing of the retrial business tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa and former police officer Mohsen Al-Sukkari. On the same day, thousands of lawyers held sit-ins for five hours outside courts nationwide in solidarity with the two lawyers. “The crisis can only be resolved if the two are released and a fair trial is held,” El-Zayat previously told Daily News Egypt. At one point the crisis seemed to end. Before the appeal session of the two lawyers on June 20, Khalifa said in press statements that the differences between lawyers and judges had been contained. He noted that intensive meetings were held with the concerned parities to solve the crisis. Khalifa said that lawyers and judges were one family complementing each other and that justice would never be achieved without the two parties being involved in the process. Speaker of People's Assembly (Lower House of the Parliament) Fathi Sorour, also a former law professor, who interfered earlier to resolve the crisis, said that the situation had become suitable for settling the crisis. Yet the court adjourned the hearing till the July 4 without releasing the two lawyers on remand. The court's decision caused the outrage of the lawyers all over Egypt who decided to maintain the strike. Khalifa once said he would resort to the president if the crisis was not resolved. In another occasion, a number of lawyers called on the United Nations to interfere and solve the crisis. However, official spokesman to the presidency Ambassador Suliman Awad said earlier this week that President Hosni Mubarak refused to interfere in the crisis. Mubarak said that the crisis was between the two pillars of justice, hoping that the two sides would resolve their differences shortly by resorting to wisdom and the sovereignty of law.
