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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Bodyguard brutality
BODYGUARDS working for Saudi Prince Turki Bin Abdel-Aziz were summoned by Egyptian prosecutors after an Egyptian cook and Lebanese pastry-maker filed two assault complaints against them for allegedly beating them.Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed, the cook, had been looking for a job at one of Cairo's five-star hotels where the prince occupies two floors. He claimed that he was beaten up for not moving quickly enough out of the way of the bodyguards. He allegedly suffered damage to his eyes and chin. The pastry-maker, Saad Ali Hemeida, accused the bodyguards of beating him and then locking him up for three months. He said he prompted their wrath after demanding that the prince pay him $7,500 owed for several months of work.
Prince Turki has had a series of confrontations with the Egyptian legal system concerning several similar complaints filed against his bodyguards.
A judge's horror
A CRIMINAL court, on Sunday, demanded that the legal prohibition on handing down death sentences to minors, under 18 years of age, be revoked. The court's chief judge made this demand after sentencing 17-year-old Sayed Hassan to 15 years imprisonment. The youth had raped and then murdered his four-year-old cousin, Fatma Hassan.Expressing his horror at the atrocity of the crime, the judge complained that the age-barrier set by the law had prevented the court from sentencing the culprit to death, which in his view, was the proper punishment for such a monstrous crime.
Billions up in smoke
EGYPTIANS puff their way through 60 billion cigarettes each year, according to Health Ministry statistics. That figure could reach 85 billion by the year 2000, said Health Minister Ismail Sallam at an anti-smoking conference.Egypt, with a population approaching 64 million, has six million smokers, including half a million children, and the rate is growing at two per cent a year.
Environment Minister Nadia Makram Ebeid called for employers to be fined LE20,000 if they allow smoking in the workplace and for people caught smoking in public places to be fined LE50.
Parliamentary health committee chairman, Sherif Omar, has said that LE1 billion go up in tobacco smoke each year.
What's in a name?
AN EGYPTIAN court rejected a suit of slander filed against US President Bill Clinton by an Egyptian family who carry the same name as the American president's dog, Buddy.Abdel-Hamid Buddy, 40, complained that carrying the same name as America's "First Dog" had made a "laughing stock" of his family. In a complaint filed in May, he demanded $5 million, plus interest, in damages.
The court cleared Clinton after ruling that his dog's name was "widespread in his country" and had no connection whatsoever to the Buddy family.
