Issue No. 607
Opinion
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10 - 16 October 2002 Issue No. 607 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Drawing the line
When a judge walks into a courtroom and everyone rises in respect, there is a reason. And never was that reason clearer than on the day the Giza Criminal Court cleared 11 defendants of all charges in connection with the train disaster earlier this year. As you will recall, 373 people died when an Aswan- bound train caught fire this past February -- a terrible tragedy that highlighted the travesty that third-class train services had become.
Not just in the courtroom, but across the country, the court panel led by Counselor Sa'ad Abdel-Wahed received a well- deserved ovation, for it did the honorable thing, and more.
The court panel not only cleared the defendants -- all of them low-level employees of the Railway Authority -- but also pointed the finger at the real culprits, the defendants' superiors who failed, repeatedly, to do their jobs. How could the ticket collectors and inspectors be responsible for negligence on that scale? How could trains run without fire extinguishers, safety brakes and emergency exits, unless incompetence was rife in high places? The judges threw out the charges, and in doing so sent the country a clear message: Clean up the upper echelons, and stop feeding the judiciary with scapegoats.
The ruling did more than exonerate innocent people; it reassured the public that the judiciary is still alert and independent, and that when the executive branch fails them and appoints people of questionable character and competence to high posts who do nothing to address conditions in which disasters are bound to happen, the case won't be closed with a few powerless employees thrown into the slammer.
The Giza judges have drawn the line, and the public has approved.
This week's Soapbox speaker is a journalist with Al-Ahali newspaper.
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