Egypt's Court of Cassation Saturday acquitted former MP Hani Sorour, who heads a medical equipment company, and six other defendants in the notorious defective blood bags case that has grabbed the public atteention in Egypt for more than four years now. "All the seven defendants from Hydelina Medical are found to be innocent from supplying defective blood bags to public hospitals affiliated to the Health Ministry," the court, Egypt's hisghest judicial authority said. It added that the previous ruling to jail the defendants and fine them had ignored reports from the Parliament Health Committee and the Ministry of Health. The ruling of the Cassation Court is final and cannot be appealed. Sorour, the General Manager of Hydelina Medical and the other six defendants were all acquitted by a criminal court early in 2008 before the Prosecutor General appealed the ruling and referred them to another court, which sentenced them to jail terms ranging from six months to three years. All seven charged were also ordered to pay an LE3,695,000 fine and ordered Sorour, his sister, also a defendant in the same case, to pay the same amount to the public treasury. Sorour, who was sentenced in absentia before he turned himself over to the police earlier this year, is a member of the ruling National Democratic Party and was a former member of the legislatures economic affairs committee. He was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in January 2007. The proceedings began in mid-2007 after an employee at the Health Ministry, Soheir el-Sharkawi, blew the whistle on 200,000 defective blood bags in the ministry's storage infected with bacteria and fungi likely to cause cancer and hepatitis.
