Six lawyers given suspended 1-year sentences, 3 acquitted over 2015 in-court dispute

A North Giza court acquitted three lawyers on Sunday and handed six others one-year suspended sentences over allegations dating back to a 2015 dispute, lawyer Mohsen Bahnasy told Mada Masr.

The nine lawyers were referred to court in early February, facing allegations that they disrupted the work of a court chamber for the Imbaba and Ausim district in 2015. 

The court’s decision to convict six of the lawyers on Sunday unnecessarily prolongs the dispute, Mohsen Bahnasy told Mada Masr.

The acquitted lawyers were former chair of the Giza branch of the Lawyers Syndicate and current syndicate council member Mahmoud al-Dakhly, North Giza syndicate council member Ramadan Kishk and lawyer Iman Hassan, said Bahnasy.

Dozens of lawyers attended a Saturday court session in a show of solidarity with the nine lawyers. Yet proceedings were postponed until Sunday when syndicate chair Ragaei Attiya, attending the Saturday session as head of the lawyers’ defense team, collapsed in court and was later pronounced dead.

A new defense was chosen by presiding judge Mohamed Bahaa Abu Shaqa — a Supreme Legislative Reform Committee member and election campaign adviser for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — before the judge reserved the case for the verdict today.

The North Giza prosecution alleged that, during an April 30, 2015 court session, the defendants lined up in the courtroom and in front of the deliberation room and chanted insults against the judiciary with the goal of preventing the court from convening. The lawyers are also accused of stealing the court’s ledger for the day.

The prosecution charged the nine lawyers with using force against judges of the court’s appellate misdemeanor chamber for the Imbaba and Ausim district, its secretary, bailiff and police personnel on duty. 

Three members of the syndicate branch who spoke to Mada Masr in February each disputed the version of events put forward by the North Giza prosecution. They said that during a court session on the day in question, a lawyer commented on a decision by the head of the appellate misdemeanor chamber to detain a defendant, saying, “Have mercy, your honor. He’s an old man.” The judge considered the comment an insult to the court and ordered the lawyer detained.

Angered, the other lawyers present requested that the syndicate branch intervene, prompting Dakhly, then-chair of the Giza syndicate branch, along with Kishk and seven other lawyers to meet with the judge in the deliberation room, hoping to resolve the issue.

However, the judge and lawyers argued during the meeting, which escalated to the point that the lawyers requested the court’s recusal and decided to boycott the judge’s sessions.

According to one of the lawyers, the judge was transferred to another chamber soon after the incident, which the lawyers presumed would be the end of the matter.

In 2017, the lawyers learned that the judge had filed a case against them, but no decisions were made until November 2021, when Dakhly, Kishk and the others were summoned to testify ahead of their referral to trial by the Public Prosecution on February 1.