CAIRO: The lawyer representing Egypt’s ex-interior minister Habib El-Adly for his involvement in killing protesters will ask the court to order a ballistics test to compare the bullet shells retrieved after the clashes with the Interior Ministry’s weapons.
Lawyer Essam El-Batawy told Daily News Egypt Monday that the court, as the only authority with that jurisdiction, must order a full examination into the compatibility of the bullets and guns to prove whether police really attacked peaceful protesters during the January 25 uprising.
“Each bullet shell has a serial number which matches the weapon it was fired from,” El-Batawy explained.
“All we want is the truth,” he said.
The defense team and the lawyers representing civil rights claimants began examining the evidence on Sunday.
The evidence included videotapes provided by Egyptian intelligence showing footage of attackers in civilian clothes targeting protesters in Tahrir Square, according to El-Batawy.
The tapes showed footage of the square between Feb. 1 and Feb. 8.
Under the regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, it was common for police informants in civilian clothes to beat and detain protesters.
“We all know that State Security officers and police informants wore civilian clothes while they violated the rights of peaceful protesters and viciously attacked them,” Mohamed Safy El-Din, a civil rights lawyer volunteering with the prosecution, told DNE, adding that he was going to examine the evidence on Tuesday.
Last week, the court set a time frame from Aug. 6 - 11 for lawyers to examine the evidence at the High Court, and adjourned the trial to Aug. 14.
As the trial was aired live on TV, the judge went through the evidence which included four weapons; paper documents from Central Security’s operation room detailing its strategy for quelling protesters and the weapons used; CDs of the pictures of injured protesters; and documents from the general prosecution’s international cooperation office.
The evidence also included a jacket and trousers riddled with bullet holes, belonging to victim Ahmed Hazem, and a medium-sized metal plate damaged from gunshots, in addition to live and rubber bullet shells and pellets retrieved from the scene of the crime.
The court only allowed one lawyer representing each defendant to review the evidence.
Last month, the case of El-Adly and six security chiefs were added to Mubarak’s case.
The first session of the joint trials was held on Aug. 3. Mubarak’s was adjourned to Aug. 15.
On May 5, El-Adly was sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering and unlawful acquisition of public funds, the first convicted official of Mubarak’s former regime.
