Justice Minister Adel Abdel Hamid decided Monday to hold the trial of those accused in the Port Said Stadium violence in the courtroom of the Police Academy on 17 April.
Abdel Hamid’s decision came after he received a formal letter from Minister of Culture Shaker Abdel Hamid declining to turn the Ismailia Cultural Center into a court after artists staged vigils in protest.
Saad Abdel Rahman, chairman of the General Authority of Culture Palaces, had told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the minister of culture was not informed of the decision to turn the cultural center into a court.
On Thursday, intellectuals, authors, activists and politicians from the Suez Canal governorates of Ismailia, Suez and Port Said and from the Sinai Peninsula staged a sit-in at the Ismailia Cultural Center to protest the decision to hold the trial there.
The demonstrators had blocked the main road in front of the cultural center and were holding an open-ended sit-in inside the building.
Over 70 people died at Port Said Stadium after a premier league match on 1 February, in a massacre that has widely been blamed on the willful negligence of police and security services.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
