Front pages of both state-run and private local newspapers lead with the longest session yet of the trial of former President Hosni Mubarak, his Interior Minister Habib al-Adly and six of his aides. The trial lasted for about 11 hours, during which four witnesses vindicated Adly from accusations he had ordered the killing of protesters, in contradicton of accounts they gave earlier to lawyers. Presiding Judge Ahmed Refaat adjourned the session, to be resumed Wednesday.
According to Egypt’s flagship Al-Ahram newspaper, Monday’s session of Mubarak’s trial was the first time where the Ministry of Interior publically admitted that they were supplied with automatic guns to deter protesters during the 18-day uprising.
The state-run daily however, is the only newspaper that fails to mention, in its headline, the contradictory testimony of the first witness General Hussein Moussa, who was responsible for communication among the Central Security Forces during the 18-day uprising.
Al-Ahram reports later in its story that Moussa told the court that Ahmed Ramzy, former assistant minister for the Central Security Forces, was the one who ordered arming Central Security Forces (CSF) with live ammunition. This contradicted his earlier confession to lawyers that the orders came from Adly.
State-run Al-Akhbar on the other hand leads with a rather sensational headline that reads “fake witnesses; the first retracted and denied Adly had committed a crime, the second defended Ahmed Ramzy, the third acquitted the interior ministry and the forth didn’t see anything.”
It reports that 11 were injured and 22 arrested in clashes that erupted outside the courtroom between Mubarak supporters and families of those killed during the protests. It displays pictures of the clashes on its front page.
The privately owned Al-Shorouk puts a picture of CSF beating martyrs’ families on its front page, and quotes an eyewitness saying that police forces “used unjustified force against anti-Mubarak protesters and arrested 15 after they chanted against the Interior Ministry, its officers and the ruling military council.”
As for Egypt-Israel relations, Al-Shorouk reports that according to the Israeli daily Maariv, Benyamin Netenyahu, Israeli Prime Minister had his first phone call with Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), following the Eilat attacks in mid August. Maariv added that the two leaders agreed on ways to strengthen security measures on border between the two neighboring countries and to fight “Islamist terrorist elements.”
On a different note, the state-run daily Al-Gomhurriya reveals that the government is on the way to announcing a maximum wage limit 36 times the minimum, and setting the maximum wage at LE25,000. According to Al-Gomhurriya, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf led a meeting with his cabinet in which they decided to form a committee that would begin procedures for narrowing the wage gap in January of next year.
Egypt's papers:
Al-Ahram: Daily, state-run, largest distribution in Egypt
Al-Akhbar: Daily, state-run, second to Al-Ahram in institutional size
Al-Gomhurriya: Daily, state-run
Rose al-Youssef: Daily, state-run
Al-Dostour: Daily, privately owned
Al-Shorouk: Daily, privately owned
Al-Wafd: Daily, published by the liberal Wafd Party
Youm7: Daily, privately owned
Al-Tahrir: Daily, privately owned
Sawt al-Umma: Weekly, privately owned
Al-Arabi: Weekly, published by the Arab Nasserist party
