Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 April 2002 Issue No.581
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Judgement postponed
A MILITARY court has postponed its ruling in the case of 22 leading Muslim Brotherhood figures, reports Jailan Halawi.
The defendants are accused of belonging to an outlawed group, and of seeking to make use of current events in the Arab and Islamic world to incite the public against the government in order to take over power.
Some of the suspects are also accused of collecting donations and founding an information technology company which was meant to channel its revenues to the Brotherhood's coffers.
The judgement will now be pronounced on 26 May.
The suspects' defence lawyers believe that the postponement is due to the current protests in solidarity with Palestinians, meaning that any judgement now would come at a "sensitive moment in time." The presiding judge gave no reason for delaying the ruling but judicial sources said that the court wanted to "study the case file further."
The suspects were put on trial in December on charges of subversion, sedition and recruiting new members for the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
None of the suspects appeared in court on Sunday, the day the judgement was initially meant to be handed down.
The Brotherhood, which has affiliate organisations throughout the Arab world, issued a statement in December condemning the trial and saying it was "not based on any tangible evidence." Numerous local and international rights groups have also condemned the trial of civilians in Egypt's military courts.
Another collapse
FIVE PEOPLE were killed and eight seriously injured when a building collapsed on 5 April. The five-storey building in the El-Sabtiya neighbourhood of Cairo was under construction, and later found out to be without licence for this.
Amongst the five dead are two workers who were trapped under the rubble and later died.
Prosecution officials ordered the arrest of the building's owner, whose whereabouts are unknown.
A new spy trial
THE TRIAL of Magdi Anwar Tawfik, who is accused of espionage for Israel, will start on 11 May at a State Security court in Alexandria.
The 53-year-old man allegedly sent faxes to the Israeli consulate in Alexandria offering to provide "important" information about Egypt's political and diplomatic activities. He is also accused of falsifying official documents.
Tawfik introduced himself in the faxes as a minister plenipotentiary at the Egyptian foreign ministry, and offered to cooperate with the Israelis by supplying information undermining Egypt's political, diplomatic and economic status.
Tawfik was arrested eight months ago, making him the second Egyptian to be held on charges of spying for Israel since September 2000 when the Palestinian uprising erupted.
Smuggled statue found
FIFTEEN years after being handed over from one antiques smuggler to another, a brown quartzite statue of king Amenhotep III will be returned to Egypt from Holland next week, reports Nevine El- Aref. An Egyptian delegation from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) will travel to Holland next week to reclaim the stolen statue.
The statue was originally stolen 15 years ago, when a professional antiquities smuggler successfully took it from Monto temple storehouse in Karnak. His loot also included 54 further items.
According to Zahi Hawass, general secretary of the SCA, the soon-to-be recovered object is a well-preserved brown quartzite statue of the famous 18th dynasty king. Amenhotep III's mortuary temple in the Thebean necropolis was the largest ever built. His only remaining statues, at the temple's entrance, are popularly known as the colossi of Memnon.
The statue is 50cm in height and 33cm in width. It is inscribed with hieroglyphic texts proclaiming the different names and titles of the king.
The Amenhotep III statute was found in collaboration with the Interpol. It was discovered in the house of a private antiques collector in The Hague, capital of the Netherlands, and handed over to the Egyptian embassy there.
On their trip to Holland, the SCA officials will also conduct an inspection tour to look for the other 54 stolen objects.
The SCA has a policy of trying to retrieve all of Egypt's smuggled treasures. In line with this, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni recently warned that all scientific cooperation will be halted with any international universities and museums that refuse to return smuggled artifacts to Egypt.
Compiled by Shaden Shehab

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