An Egyptian court on Sunday postponed to 3 July the trial of 13 police officers working at the Imbaba and Kerdasa police stations in Cairo. The defendants are accused of killing protesters during the 25 January revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
The defendants are charged with “killing six people and injuring 18 others by shooting unknown persons attempting to break into the two police stations."
During the session, which was held at the Giza Criminal Court in the north of Cairo for security reasons, a confrontation broke out between the victims’ relatives and the defense team.
The relatives threatened that if the defendants were not detained, they would organize a sit-in outside the Maspiro building of the Radio and Television Union, while one of the prosecutors described defendants as having committed “grand treason”.
The prosecution demanded the continued detention of the defendants as “their presence on the street was infuriating the victims’ relatives.”
During the session, the public prosecutor requested the death penalty for the defendants.
Meanwhile, the defendants all pleaded not guilty and one of the defense lawyers requested that former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly be summoned as a defendant in the case as he was "responsible for issuing the instructions to the officers to fire live ammunition at the peaceful protestors."
Translated from the Arabic Edition
