New evidence in favour of Aida

By Fatemah Farag

New evidence has been dug up by one of Aida's new lawyers, Amer Abu Heif. Last week, Abu-Heif made an urgent appeal to the prosecutor's office, requesting that new witnesses be questioned. The prosecutor turned down the request on the grounds that the case now was before the Court of Cassation.

Through the use of hospital statistics, Abu Heif proved that while Aida was in jail seven deaths took place from 1 January to 4 April 1998 at the neurology ward of the Alexandria University Hospital as a result of respiratory failure -- the cause of Ibrahim's death.

Abu Heif used two outstanding examples to prove the state of negligence and chaos prevailing at the hospital. The first case is the death of Mohamed El-Sabagh who underwent surgery for a brain tumour on 27 December. El-Sabagh died two days later as a result of a brain haemorrhage. However, his death would not have been news if it had not been for the complaint of a hospital doctor who said that an outsider performed the surgery, although the doctor was free at the time. The second is the case of Karima Rizq who also suffered a brain tumour and died on 16 January of respiratory failure. Despite the fact that her family requested an autopsy, it was not done and questions regarding the cause of death remain pending.

These cases connect to a medical report published as a document in a recent book on the Aida trial. The report provides evidence that Ibrahim was already suffering partial respiratory paralysis two weeks before he actually died. Consequently, evidence that Aida killed him by administering a muscle-relaxing drug cannot be conclusive.

Abu Heif is also producing new witnesses. "He went to the people who occupied beds near Ibrahim's bed in the emergency ward," explained Mohamed Noureddin, Aida's brother, to Al-Ahram Weekly, "The witnesses questioned by the court were from the emergency ward generally and were not close to Ibrahim's bed and hence were not adequate. These new witnesses swore by the Holy Qur'an that Aida had not been near Ibrahim before he died and that his condition was very bad."

Further, the Alexandria prosecutor's office has called in three doctors working at the neurology section for questioning. However, Adel Eid -- Aida's sole lawyer during the trial and until recently -- played down the importance of these developments. "These are all irrelevant to the case," claimed Eid. "All this alleged new evidence has nothing to do with the case. The judges of the Court of Cassation will only look at the papers in the dossier in front of them."

Although Aida's family still supports Eid and has asked him to continue with the case in addition to five new lawyers, there are complaints regarding how the case was handled from the beginning. "There were many issues that should have been brought up like her being moved from one police station to another for no legal reason, the abuse and then the details of what happens in the ward, of which she informed Eid. Aida said she wanted to confront witnesses and the court with these things and Eid said that he would take care of them and then he didn't," Mohamed Nouredin said. He also alluded to the fact that additional new evidence would be disclosed at the right time.

Despite the widespread support, Mohamed Noureddin reports that his sister's morale is low. "I visited her last week and we were not allowed to have a private meeting. It has to be through the wire mesh and until today she is kept in solitary confinement. It is as if they are trying to keep her away from anybody, so that she cannot say anything," he said.