CAIRO: The Tanta Appeals Court on Sunday postponed to July 4 the retrial of the two lawyers accused of assaulting and insulting the local prosecutors. However, the two lawyers will remain in custody till then. “Legally speaking, the delay of the trial is a normal procedure by the criminal court to … look further into the case and allow the defense to present more memos,” lawyer Nasser Amin told Daily News Egypt. “What was unexpected is the imprisonment of the two lawyers on remand. They could have been released on bail,” added Amin, also, general director of the Arab Center for the Independent of the Judiciary and Legal Profession. Earlier this month, the court had found lawyers Ehab Saey El-Din and Mustafa Fatah guilty of attacking and insulting Basem Abu El-Rous, the local prosecutor in Tanta city. The two lawyers claimed they were offended and attacked by the prosecutor first. But during a rushed one-day trial, they were sentenced to five years in prison. Since then there has been a crisis between lawyers on one side and judges and prosecutors on the other. Thousands of lawyers held full strikes and sit-ins for several days nationwide, which further heighted the tension between the two sides. The outraged lawyers' stance was supported by Syndicate Chairman Hamdy Khalifa. The Lawyers' Syndicate appealed the verdict, assigning a defense team led by Khalifa to defend the two lawyers. Meanwhile, Saey El-Din and Fatah reportedly presented a written apology to the public prosecutor, which caused fury among lawyers. Galal Shalaby, president of Lawyers' Syndicate in Gharbia governorate, told news portal masrawy.com that he did not acknowledge this apology. He said that the lawyers seemed to have been pressured to apologize, adding that such a procedure had to be taken through the Syndicate after consulting with their defense team first. Hundreds of lawyers protested outside the courthouse during the trial session Sunday against their colleagues' move. Khalifa recently said in press statements preceding the appeal that the differences between lawyers and judges were contained. He noted that intensive meetings were held with the concerned parities to solve the crisis. “The coming phase will witness new working mechanisms so that the crisis will not be repeated,” Khalifa added. Khalifa told national television 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. People's Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour, who interfered earlier to resolve the crisis, said at the beginning of a parliamentary session Saturday that the situation had become suitable for settling the crisis.
