AUC 8 Charges

Case 51 of 2007 - Abdeen district

We counsellor/Mohammed Helmy Kandeel, First General Attorney


The state prosecutor accuses
1. Alam Eldin Barshim - 24 years old - works as as cleaner and lives
in 13 Revolution Street, Ma'adi, Sudanese passport number 852977
2. Essam Eddin Jubbara - 24 years old - cameraman and student at the
Russian centre. Lives in 9 Abdelaziz Gawish Street, Abdeen, -
Sudanese passport no B017582
3. Abdalla Hassan Abdelkariam - 20 years - student at aviation science
college - lives in 7 El Tahween Street Sudanese passport number
20056390
4. Elamin Abbas Mohamed - 20 years old- lives in 7 El Tahween St
Sudanese passport number 2044800
5. Kour Madok Deen Kodak - 21 year old - student at Ain Shams
University - lives in 7 Elzahraa, Ain Shams - No id
6. Geem Daniela Delwak - 23 years old - unemployed lives in 1 Elzahraa
Street No ID
7. Nasser Bil Leel - 19 years old - unemployed - lives in Elzahraa
Street - no ID
8. Belekel Bil Leel - 21 years old - student at the British centre in
Abbasya - lives in Elzahraa Street, Ein Shams - no ID

that on 15/6/2007in the Abdeen district, they participated along with
others (unknown) in gathering; the purpose of the gathering was to
commit assault on people and involved the possession of weapons. The
used force and violence with weapons which could cause death. During
the course of the gathering they committed the following crimes:

The first defendant -
1 Assault Malea Fealjour Bekam with intent and gather with the rest
of the defendants. He beat him multiple times with a knife and caused
injuries as described in the autopsy report and although he didn't
intend to kill him, these injuries lead to his death

2 Assault Nassr Bil Leel with full intent with a knife which caused
the injuries as described in the attached medical report (sic) which
made him not able to attend to his own personal needs for more than 20
days.

The second to fourth defendants:

1 conspired with the first on the assual on Malea Fealjour Bikam with
full intent and gather with the rest of the defendants until the first
defendants injured the victim as was described in item 1, the crime
established based on that agreement

2 Conspired with the first defendant on the assaul on Nassr Bil Leel
with full intent and gather with the rest of the defendants until the
first defendant injured the victim as was described in item 1, the
crime established based on that agreement

The defendants from the first to the third and from the fifth to the seventh:

Possession of weapons - knives - without any job or professional using
to neccessitate carrying them

Based on that

The defendants commit felony and misdemeanor according to articlees
40/2, 41, 236/2, 241/1, 2 of the penalty law. And articles 2,3,3/1
repeated on law 10 for 1914 regarding which was amended law 87 for
1968.

Therefore

After reviewing law 162 of 1958 emergency
And presidential decree no 560 of 1981 declaring emergency
and presidential decree no 131 of 2006 to extend emergency state
and presidential decree no 1 of 1981 to transfer some crimes to state
security high court under emergency law

We order

First - the referral of the case to state security high court under
emergency law in Cairo appeal court district for the trial of the
defendants and extend the detention of the defendants
Second - assign the defendants lawyers
Third - attach the criminal case
Fourth - inform the defendants with the referral order and the evidence list

New Lawyer

Essam Jubbara, one of AUC 8, now has a new lawyer representing him who has received the investigative report and will decide whether or not to defend the entire group as a whole or Essam as an individual. He is also looking into transferring the case to a more lenient court. He is also working on getting a license so that Essam can obtain outside psychological counseling. News from the other lawyers representing the other boys is still pending. (PHOTO OF ESSAM BEFORE ARRESTED)

Trial Postponed, Case Referred to State Security Court

From The Daily Star

CAIRO: The state prosecutor on Wednesday postponed indefinitely the trial of eight men charged in connection with a gang murder on World Refugee Day just outside the American University in Cairo (AUC) campus this past July.

Prosecutors changed the charges against the defendants at the last minute, and referred the case to a State Security Court under the country’s Emergency Law.

Family and friends of the accused gathered at the South Cairo Courthouse in Bab El Khalq Wednesday morning. The eight were told two weeks earlier that their months of detention would finally come to an end.

The defendants have been in legal limbo since their arrest in July, when they were detained in connection with a gang fight between members of two Sudanese gangs “the Lost Boys” and “the Outlaws.”

The fight left one man hacked to death by a machete outside the Greek Campus of AUC.

Friends of the eight men insist they were innocent by-standers to the violent melee, and say there is no evidence against them.

For its part, the prosecutor’s office has avoided setting a firm trial date and instead repeatedly extends their detention for weeks at a time.

At the last such hearing in October, the men were told they would see their day in court on Nov. 7, but it was not to be.

At the last minute, the defendants were taken in shackles from the open-air pen behind the court house to the nearby State Security directorate. They were told that they were now to be charged with a more serious offense.

All eight now stand accused of murder. Before Wednesday’s session, only one of the men was accused of “accidental murder,” which carried a penalty of seven to 10 years in jail.

Weapons possession charges against all eight still stand, a crime which carries a sentence of three months to one year in prison.

Lawyers for the men predict that the case will be tried in the State Security Court in Rehab City by mid-December. But they admit that, as the events in Bab El-Khalq demonstrate, the justice system is unpredictable.

Members of the men’s families reacted to the change in the case with dismay, holding their heads in their hands in the court’s crowded entrance hall.

Mohamed Bayoumi, the lawyer in the case, said he remains committed to the case and to his client’s innocence.

“This puts these men in a very difficult situation, and now we just have to work harder,” he said. “The prosecutor is still convinced that these men killed the person who died at World Refugee Day because that is what the police officers said. But there are no other witnesses and no real reason to believe that they did this. They are just listening to the testimony of the arresting officer.”

Yousef Ahmed Saleh Idris, a friend of Essam Eddin Jubarra — one of the accused — agrees that the men are innocent. He says that Essam was working as a volunteer at the event, and was not a member of any gang.

Idris witnessed his friend’s arrest, and says it was conducted haphazardly by abusive plainclothes officers. He says he thinks the officers wanted to look like they were responding competently to the situation, but were in fact seizing random bystanders based on the color of their skin.

“Essam and his friends were been grabbed by some plainclothes police officers who were dragging them away,” he said. “I went over and told the police that he was with us, but they didn’t respond.”

“I said I wanted to talk to his boss, so the guy grabbed me too and dragged me over to the main gate at AUC where there was a plainclothes officer sitting,” he added. “The officer started screaming ‘Don’t bring anyone to see me over here, how dare you let someone see me here!’”

“I told him Essam was with me but he didn’t respond to me and just started screaming at Essam to shut up, and then he told the cops to put Essam in the truck,” he said. “When the cops were throwing him in the truck they told me I had two choices — I could either get out of there, or they would arrest me too.”

Estimates on the number of refugees in Egypt vary wildly. According to the UNHCR, it has officially registered 45,000 refugees in the country, mainly from Sudan, Somalia and Iraq. But some independent estimates push that figure to as many as three million.