Egypt ‘sentences’ policeman to 10 yrs
4 hurt in roadside blast
CAIRO, June 19, (Agencies): An Egyptian policeman was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Monday for the deadly shooting of a protester during a January 2015 rally, judicial and security officials said.
Shaima al-Sabbagh was hit with birdshot pellets on Jan 24, 2015 on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the anti-Hosni Mubarak uprising as police dispersed a march.
Sabbagh, a 34-year-old mother, was with other activists carrying a wreath to Cairo’s Tahrir Square to commemorate the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 revolt.
“The ruling can be considered good and a victory, in the circumstances we’re currently living in,” lawyer Mohamed Abdelaziz, representing Sabbagh, told AFP after the verdict.
The policeman, Lieutenant Yassin Mohamed Hatem, received a 15-year sentence in June 2015 after he was convicted of “battery that led to death”.
He appealed the ruling, and the Court of Cassation annulled it in February 2016, ordering a new trial. The officer can still appeal the latest ruling. With part of the incident captured on film, Sabbagh’s death triggered outrage in Egypt and abroad, prompting President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to publicly demand that the perpetrator be brought to justice.
Hatem’s trial was a rare legal proceeding against a policemen charged over protester deaths since the army’s ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
Tahrir Square was the epicentre of the 2001 uprising and the scene of violent confrontations between police and protesters.
Dozens of policemen were tried for the deaths of protesters after the revolt, partly fuelled by police abuses, that ousted longtime president Hosni Mubarak. But most were acquitted.
Killed
Meanwhile, an Egyptian policeman was killed and four wounded by a roadside explosive near the Cairo suburb of Maadi on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
“At around 12:45 am on June 18 as a vehicle belonging to the Central Security Forces transported a group of officers and conscripts an improvised explosive device planted on the roadside went off,” the ministry said.
“This led to the martyrdom of First Lieutenant Ali Abdelkhaliq and the injury of four others, an officer and three conscripts, who have been taken to hospital for treatment.”
A recently emerged Egyptian militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published on its Telegram messaging account late on Sunday.
The Hasm movement, which has claimed several attacks in Cairo in recent months, said today’s attack is to “emphasize that the central security forces targeted today have received a part of the punishment for what they have committed.”
Hasm, the Arabic word for decisiveness, has accused security forces of killing “peaceful protesters” and “assaulting and oppressing” protesters who have demonstrated against the plan to cede two inhabited Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, the statement added.
The group said the executors of Sunday’s attack have returned safely to their bases and promised to carry out more attacks in the coming days.
Parliament voted on Wednesday to back a treaty to handover the two uninhabited islands of Tiran and Sanfir and Sisi is expected to ratify the decision soon.
Sovereignty
The plan triggered street protests over the past few days from a small groups of Egyptians, who say their country’s sovereignty over the islands dates back to a treaty from 1906, before Saudi Arabia was founded.
The bomb was detonated remotely, and an initial examination suggested it was detonated using a mobile phone SIM card, a senior Interior Ministry official told state news agency MENA.
A joint task force made up of several police units is questioning tenants of flats overlooking the site of the attack to try to identify and arrest the culprits, the official said.
Egypt faces an Islamist insurgency led by the Islamic State group in the restive Sinai Peninsula, where hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed since 2013.
The group has also increasingly carried out attacks in the mainland on security forces and Coptic Christian civilians in recent months, killing around 100 Copts since December.
Other militant groups such as Hasm, which the government says are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, are active in Cairo and other cities where they have targeted security forces, judges, and progovernment figures.
The Brotherhood, outlawed in 2013 after the military ousted one of its leaders, Mohamed Morsi, from the presidency following mass protests, maintains that it is a peaceful organisation.
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the general who led Morsi’s ouster, was elected president in 2014.
A shadowy militant group in Egypt that is suspected of links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood has claimed responsibility for a deadly roadside bombing in Cairo the previous day.
The authorities say Sunday’s explosion in the Egyptian capital’s upscale suburb of Maadi, home to many foreigners and diplomats, was remotely detonated. One police officer was killed and four others were wounded.
The Hasm militant group says in a statement released on Monday that “members of the security forces are legitimate targets” since they have shed “the blood of peaceful demonstrators.”
It says the bombing was also a protest against parliament’s move to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. Hasm accuses the government of “selling the homeland.”
The group has previously claimed several smaller attacks, mainly targeting policemen.