Police witness charged in Mubarak trial
2011-09-07 19:06
Cairo - A police chief in court as a witness in former president Hosni Mubarak's trial was charged with giving "false testimony" on Wednesday, following charges in the Egyptian media of a cover-up.
Prosecutor Mostafa Suleiman said police commander Mohammed Abdel Hakim was charged with giving "false testimony in favour of the accused" in the case over the killing of hundreds of protesters in Egypt's January-February revolution.
He said Hakim testified in court that anti-riot units deployed in Cairo on January 28 had been equipped with blank ammunition and tear gas, whereas he had said in previous questioning that hunting ammunition had been used.
Sixty-two people were reportedly killed in clashes between security forces and demonstrators on that day.
Earlier in the Mubarak hearing, lawyers for families of dead protesters filed requests to question the ousted president's wife, Suzanne, and the country's army chief.
At the last court session on Monday, none of the witnesses who gave evidence implicated Mubarak or his interior minister Habib al-Adly for the deaths during the revolution against his three decades of autocratic rule.
The latest hearing was the fourth in the trial which opened on August 3 and, unlike the first two sessions, the process has been taken behind closed doors and off-camera.
Mohamed el-Damati, a representative of the families' lawyers in civil cases, filed to question army chief Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, to whom Mubarak handed power on his ouster in February, and Suzanne Mubarak.
Tantawi served as defence minister for two decades under the veteran president.
The lawyers have said they also want to question former intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman who has said Mubarak was aware of each bullet fired during the revolution.
Live coverage banned
Television footage showed the ailing 83-year-old who faces charges of involvement in the killings and corruption arriving at the courtroom in an ambulance and on a stretcher, as for the previous sessions.
There were no immediate reports of trouble between his supporters and opponents outside the court as on Monday, when police arrested 20 people who clashed before he appeared at the court.
But late on Tuesday, football fans clashed with police in a Cairo stadium, injuring nearly 80 people, after they chanted slogans against Mubarak and torched dozens of cars.
The charges against Mubarak, who has pleaded innocent, follow months of protests demanding justice for the roughly 850 killed during the revolt which ended his regime.
The trial is being held in a police academy once named after Mubarak on Cairo's outskirts.
The case against the ousted president and six of his security chiefs suffered another blow on Monday when it emerged that the prosecution's main witness had been convicted of destroying a recording of police telephone calls.
And two other police officers summoned to back the case that Mubarak and six security commanders ordered the shootings of protesters testified they had in fact been ordered to exercise "restraint."
"The prosecution witnesses turned into defence witnesses," independent daily Al-Shorouk said, deeming the third hearing "a battering for the victims' families."
The judge banned live television coverage on Monday, unlike earlier court hearings where Mubarak was shown in a cage on a sick bed, which made for compulsive viewing across the Arab world.