Trial against police for 37 prison transfer deaths postponed

“I wrote the word martyr on my son’s headstone; if you have anything to prove his affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood or any other political party, I will set his grave on fire myself,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, father of one of 37 inmates killed as they were moved by the police to Abu Zaabal prison facility. 

The inmates, said to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, were killed during their alleged attempt to escape from a convoy moving them to the Abu Zaabal prison facility in Qalyubiya, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

The statement also claimed that the deaths were due to suffocation by teargas, fired by police in an attempt to prevent the escape.

The inmates were detained in late August, following the violent dispersal of the Rabea and Nahda Square sit-ins supporting ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

On Tuesday morning, Khanka Misdemeanor Court, headed by Judge Ali Mashhour, decided to postpone the third session of the trial of Masr al-Gadida’s deputy chief of police and three other officers accused of the manslaughter of the 37 inmates to December 24.

During the court session, the father of one of the deceased, Rafiq Mohammad Ibrahim, told the court that his son wasn’t involved in the political events surrounding Morsi’s ouster.

According to Ibrahim, his son used to work for a company in Nasr City, “he was arrested on his way to work, then questioned, and he was supposed to be released after his colleagues filed official company papers proving he was on his way to work.”

However, the release was delayed, and Ibrahim was contacted by his son, who asked him to pay the LE5,000 bail, which he rushed from Mahalla to do the following morning, according to state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

Ibrahim then received a call from his son’s friends, who told him the inmates were moved to Abu Zaabal prison facility. Later his wife called, saying “they're showing your son’s burned body on TV, they’re taking him to Zeinhom Morgue,” Ibrahim remembers.

Al-Ahram described Ibrahim’s constant crying as he addressed the judges, “I saw my son’s charred and disfigured body, how can his death be a mistake? Whoever did this to my son cannot be human and has to be punished.”

Defense attorneys requested that the court postpones the trial until a decision is made regarding a claim by the plaintiffs that it doesn’t fall under the misdemeanor court’s jurisdiction, as evidence suggests it was a case of homicide rather than manslaughter, according to state-run Al-Akhbar newspaper.

However, the defense requested the testimony of a number of police officers present during the incident, as well as the police inspector responsible for convoys, according to Al-Ahram.

The Muslim Brotherhood formerly alleged that more than 200 people were killed in the incident, and that there was no attempt by the prisoners to escape, describing their death as an assassination.